


Your Voice (Is My Favorite Sound)

by chlexcer



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - College/University, Drama, F/F, Friendship, Humor, Love-friendship-enemies triangle, Romance, Sexual Themes, Slice of Life, chansoo as lesbians is the most important thing in the world, fem!exo, queen of musicals!kyungsoo, skater girl!chanyeol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8011885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlexcer/pseuds/chlexcer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Chanhee hears a mysterious girl singing in the dorm showers, suddenly all the stories about sailors getting charmed to death by the voices of mermaids start making sense. [fem!ChanSoo, college!AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aurora_Arcanum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurora_Arcanum/gifts).



> More lesbians, by Yours Truly.  
> This time it's of (one of) my fave fem!EXO OTP(s), ChanSoo -- (and this is to S, because I promised her a fem!ChanSoo a long time ago, but I still haven't been able to work properly on it. I hope this suffices in the meantime ❤ )  
> This has a little bit of personal experience in it - I was in the showers in the dorm when suddenly a girl that was also taking a shower there starts singing so beautifully!! I never got to see who the girl was, sadly, but she made my day.  
> The title is from Alina Baraz and Galimatias's "Drift", one of my favorite songs in the world (although the mood doesn't fit the fic right, this one line pretty much sums it up).  
> I hope you like it!

Only one out of the three available showers was occupied when Chanhee stumbled into the washroom of her floor of the dorm at five thirty in the morning. 

She didn’t usually wake up so early, but she had made a promise with her best friend Baekyeon that they would start working out in the early morning starting the second Monday of their last year in university so they could have “ _chocolate abs instead of Nutella abs”_ (in Baekyeon’s words) by summer break.

(They had also made a bet that the first one to quit would have to buy the other a new pair of good sneakers, and since Chanhee wasn’t exactly swimming in money, it was definitely an excellent motivation to work out regardless of the early hour).

So there she was.

She slipped into the third shower, leaving one between the other early riser and her.

The water was burning hot, just the way Chanhee liked it. She hummed softly and closed her eyes as the water ran down her body from the top of her head, wetting her long chocolate brown hair and making it stick to the skin of her back, and down the barely-there curves of her body. She was tall and skinny, and she didn’t have much ass or boobs, but Chanhee didn’t mind. Actually, she theorized that her noodle-esque body was one of the reasons she was so good on the skateboard.

But getting abs wouldn’t hurt.

She was extremely sleepy, and the hot water was only making it worse. She had barely been able to apply shampoo to the top of her head, and her eyes had closed instinctively as she scrubbed her scalp with it, the sweet scent of apples and mango invading her nostrils.

All of a sudden, a sweet sound reached Chanhee’s ears.

It was loud enough for her to hear over the noise of two showers, but soft enough to make Chanhee wonder whether she was only dreaming it.

She stopped scrubbing the shampoo to listen carefully—

It was obviously the girl in the other occupied shower who was singing, but it seemed like a sound that came from a different dimension.

She recognized the song, but the mysterious girl wasn’t singing the lyrics. She was only humming it and singing random words here and there, but to Chanhee it felt like the most soulful and beautiful thing she had ever heard.

The girl’s voice was soft, sweet, but also deep, velvety, and so, so steady.

Chanhee was stupefied by it – as the mysterious girl’s voice invaded her ears and flooded her senses, suddenly all the stories about sailors getting charmed to death by the voices of mermaids made sense. She was just standing in the middle of her shower stall, butt naked and covered only by a plastic curtain, with her fingers still tangled in her hair and digging onto her own scalp and her hair covered in apple-mango scented foam, unable to do anything but listen.

The singer turned off her shower, but she didn’t stop singing. Her voice sounded even more clearly, actually, and Chanhee almost shivered despite the fact that her shower was so hot it was making her skin red.

The spell only broke when the girl stopped singing and left with the anticlimactic sound of wet flip-flops on ceramic tile echoing behind her.

    

“What took you so long, Park?” Baekyeon said the moment she saw her approaching in her skateboard.

Her friend was sitting on the top step of the stairway in front of the campus gym, her phone in her hands. Her black hair was tied in a high ponytail, and she was wearing short pink shorts that really showcased her thighs and a black tank top. She looked hot as hell and it was only six thirty-five in the morning – Chanhee had no idea how she did it.

“Good morning to you too, fucker” Chanhee said, no real bite to her voice. After getting off from her board, she gave her friend a high five to greet her.

(Baekyeon and Chanhee had become friends in middle school and they had become inseparable. So many years later, their friendship was pretty much indissoluble. Chanhee had always joked around saying she would fuck Baekyeon any day, and indeed, they had had a sort of ‘occasional-fuck-buddies’ relationship going on during their first two years of college regardless of the fact that Baekyeon was almost exclusively attracted to guys, but not even that potentially dangerous situation could tear them apart. They stopped doing it because the previous year Baekyeon started dating a just-as-loud-as-her guy from her class called Kim Jongdae and now they were loud together and happily in love with each other).

“You know for how long I’ve been waiting here?” Baekyeon asked, standing up from the staircase and wiping dust from her butt.

“Like, five minutes?” Chanhee said, raising an eyebrow at her shorter friend as she tied her skateboard to a bicycle parking site (something everybody made fun of her for).

“Exactly. An eternity,” Baekyeon replied, smiling smugly at her.

“I was showering, and I had to wash my hair— but dude, the most magical thing happened,” the tall girl said, referring to the incident of the mysterious singer, as she headed inside the campus gym with her friend. They had already signed up for it and had looked up a good routine they could follow that wouldn’t leave them too exhausted before their classes started. They had already visited the gym together plenty of times in the previous years, so they were more than familiar with it and knew exactly what to do. “I think I’m in love.”

“Why the hell did you wash your hair before coming to the gym, though?” 

“I hadn’t washed it in like, two days. But that’s beside the point. Listen to me, dude – there was another girl in the showers,” Chanhee said, telling Baekyeon her early morning experience as they headed towards the treadmills. “And I’m sure she’s a mermaid.”

“Okay, wow, why do you think that? You saw her naked and saw she has a huge fishtail or something?” Baekyeon said, clearly amused.

Chanhee shook her head as she set up her treadmill into a rhythm ideal to her. “I think she was wearing flip-flops, so she doesn’t have a fishtail. But she has a mermaid’s voice. I was just putting on my shampoo when suddenly she starts to sing, and dude, I had never heard a voice like that. I couldn’t move, or anything – I could only listen to her. She sang so, so, so beautifully…” The tall girl explained, her voice becoming a bit more strained as she jogged on the treadmill.

“Better than me?” Baekyeon asked, giving Chanhee an incredulous look from her own treadmill beside hers. Baekyeon was an amazing singer and she was majoring in singing performance, so it was natural that she felt a little jealous.

“I wouldn’t say better, but different,” Chanhee said after a small pause, careful not to hurt Baekyeon’s pride. “I had never heard anyone sing like her, and she wasn’t even singing properly! She was just, like, humming and saying random words, but I swear I can’t get her voice out of my head. I need to know who she is.”

“Well… Maybe you should try to get a glimpse of her, or something? She might be there tomorrow morning as well…” Baekyeon suggested, her ponytail jumping up and down in time with her quick steps on the treadmill. “Strike a conversation with her somehow.”

“She’ll think I’m weird as fuck, Baek,” Chanhee complained, pouting. “What do I even say to her?”

“You _are_ weird as fuck, though,” the shorter girl said, flashing a little grin in Chanhee’s direction. Chanhee glared at her, but before could complain again, Baekyeon continued, “but just ask her what her name is, or something. Tell her that you love the way she sings – trust me in this one. If she’s a singer, and she really is as good as you say she is, then nothing could make her feel better than hearing that you think she sings well.”

“Are you sure?” Chanhee asked, unsure.

“Yeah, definitely sure,” Baekyeon said, nodding, though she sounded way more breathless than before due to the combination of exercising and talking. “If somebody told me they like the way I sing even when I was only singing in the shower I’d feel so, so flattered! Talent is not a thing to be embarrassed about, you know?”

“Alright…” Chanhee said, panting as well. “You better be right. I hope she’s there tomorrow morning as well.”

    

The following morning Chanhee spent a slightly longer time lounging on her bed before heading to the showers because she was tired.

Not only her body ached after the previous day’s work out, but she had also had very intense day in general. 

(She was majoring in musical education, and since it was her last year she was getting her practice done. She was a learning teacher at a fifth grade music class on a nearby school, and she had had her first class the previous afternoon. Needless to say, it had been exhausting, though at the same time extremely rewarding.)

When she suddenly remembered the voice of the girl she had heard the day before, she all but ran to the common washroom, awaking her roommate in the process.

She was barely two steps away from the washroom when she almost ran into a girl that was coming out of it, wrapped in a fluffy navy blue towel.

She was at least one entire head shorter than Chanhee, and she looked like she was probably one or two years younger.

She was also extremely gorgeous.

Her wet black hair reached just below her ears, and the color of it matched the one of her eyes – also black, and deep, and huge as she looked up at Chanhee. The tall girl didn’t know if her eyes were naturally that big or if she was just surprised, but they were beautiful regardless, and they reflected the artificial white light of the hall in a way that looked a lot like stars on a clear night. Her skin was a soft shade of caramel, and there were drops of water dotting her shoulders and clavicles and rolling down her body until the fabric of the towel absorbed them. The girl’s lips were thick and plump and they looked so _soft_ — 

“Uhm, can I help you, or…?” the girl with black hair asked, and her soft voice brought Chanhee back to the real world. Only then she realized that she had spaced out while looking at the other girl who had just come out of the showers, and that she was also blocking her way.

“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry— I’m sorry, I’m still very sleepy, I didn’t mean to bother you,” Chanhee said, quickly moving out of the shorter girl’s way and bowing her head at her in apology. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” the other girl said, and her voice was sweet even if her eyes seemed to scream ‘get me out of here’. She walked away just like that, then, leaving Chanhee all alone in the hall of the dorm.

Chanhee was alone through her entire shower, and she couldn’t help but jump into conclusions as she stood under the spray of hot water, this time not bothering to wash her hair – the gorgeous girl with short black hair and big eyes was probably the owner of the beautiful voice she had heard the previous morning.

“You’re fifteen minutes late today, and if your excuse isn’t that you told the girl that you liked her singing and she fell in love with you I don’t want to hear it,” Baekyeon said when Chanhee finally got to the gym on her skateboard.

“I overslept, actually – but dude, I think I saw her!” Chanhee said, excitedly. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen!”

Baekyeon rolled her eyes, but it was a fond gesture. “You say that pretty much about every girl.”

“This time I mean it,” Chanhee insisted as she tied her skateboard to the same bicycle parking from the day before. “And I really think it’s her because her voice would really match her face, you know? She’s got huge eyes, and they’re round and black and so, so pretty. And her lips were so thick and gorgeous, and she was just so cute—!”

“You’re not making much sense, Chanhee,” Baekyeon said with a soft laugh while she stroked her friend’s shoulder. “I’m sure she was gorgeous. Do you really think it’s the same girl, though?”

“Well… Yesterday there was nobody around but the singing girl, and today, just a few minutes later, there was nobody around but this girl, so yeah. They’re probably the same person, don’t you think?” Chanhee reasoned as they headed inside of the gym for their second work out day.

“It could be, but I wouldn’t jump into conclusions. You should get a look of the actual singing girl to be sure. But, hey, how was your first day with the kids yesterday?”

    

On Wednesday, Chanhee made extra sure she woke up at a good time in order not to miss the singing girl, but nobody had gone to the washroom at all much to her disappointment.

It wasn’t until Friday morning that she heard the girl again.

She was pretty discouraged, and she was almost beginning to convince herself that maybe it had all been her imagination when suddenly the sound of a second shower running joined the one of her own shower, and a few seconds later the same voice she had heard on Monday resounded in the shower room.

The song was a different one, and this time Chanhee didn’t recognize it, but it was still beautiful to her ears.

She closed her eyes and let the melodic voice of the mysterious girl flood her senses (though this time she didn’t stop washing herself to listen because she knew she had to finish before the other girl so she could get an actual look at her).

Chanhee actually had to force herself to get out of her shower before the girl was done singing so she could wait for her outside of the room with the shower stalls. Wrapped in nothing but her white towel, she combed her hair and brushed her teeth while she waited impatiently, and she was just spitting toothpaste foam into the sink when the door of the shower room opened and the same girl she had seen on Tuesday came out clad in the same blue towel.

Their eyes met on the mirror for a brief moment, and Chanhee felt her throat constricting around nothing. 

“Hi,” the tall girl forced herself to say, sending the singing girl a smile through the mirror.

The other girl didn’t say anything – she just mouthed a little greeting and slightly bowed her head before she started heading towards the door.

An alarm went off in Chanhee’s head; she couldn’t let the girl go away without knowing at least what her name was.

“W-Wait!” Chanhee called, turning around to face the singing girl who was halfway out the door. The short girl turned around and looked up at Chanhee when she called out for her.

“Yes?” She asked, and her voice was so sweet and melodic, Chanhee felt stupid for not realizing it was her on Tuesday morning. Under her intense stare Chanhee felt small – she was straining her eyes and it looked like she was frowning, and it intimidated the taller girl.

“I just, uh…” Chanhee started, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “I just wanted to tell you that your voice is beautiful. I heard you sing, and it impressed me so much, I really wanted to tell you that…”

“Oh,” the shorter girl said, and she actually smiled at that, her expression relaxing. She fixed her grip on the towel that was wrapped around her body as she smiled at the ground for a short moment. “Thank you. Honestly. I’ve tried not to sing in the shower, but I don’t know why I can’t stop myself from doing it. I’m sorry if it bothers you—“

“—what?” Chanhee said, interrupting her. “No, not at all! It doesn’t bother me in the slightest! In fact, I love it! I would record you if I could, your voice is so beautiful…!”

“O-Oh my god, please don’t do that,” the shorter girl said, taking a step back towards the door.

“I never said I would actually do it!” Chanhee said, and she had no idea why but she was panicking a little bit. Perhaps it because she had probably scared the other girl away and got her thinking she was a weirdo.

“Good. Listen, I really have to go or else I’ll be late, but I guess I’ll see you around…?” The short girl said, and she left the end of her sentence suspended, as if she was waiting for an answer. It took Chanhee a few seconds to realize that she was actually waiting for her to tell her her name.

“Oh! I’m Chanhee. Park Chanhee,” she said, feeling simultaneously confused and flattered that the other girl wanted to know her name. “And you are…?”

“Do Kyungsoon,” the black haired said, and she gave her one small smile before bowing her head politely at her. Chanhee returned the gesture readily. “I’ll go now, but thank you. And please don’t record me.”

“I won’t!” Chanhee said, wishing she hadn’t joked around like that. “I’m sorry, I was just kidding. See you around, then, Kyungsoon!”

    

“Do Kyungsoon?! The girl you like is Do Kyungsoon?!” Baekyeon asked during lunch, obviously shocked when Chanhee told her the name of the mysterious girl she had been dreaming of all week.

(Baekyeon had skipped working out that morning in favor of spending quality time with Jongdae after staying the night at his place – Chanhee had demanded new sneakers, but Baekyeon bailed out of her demand for saying that she wasn’t quitting and letting Chanhee take a day off working out someday. It was a good deal, Chanhee supposed.)

They were sitting on a picnic table in the faculty of education along with some of their other friends. The reason was simply that most of them studied a different specialty in education at the same faculty as Chanhee – Junmyeon and Yixing were going to be math teachers, Yifan and Minseon were going to be English teachers, and Lu Han a P.E. teacher. It was only Jongdae and Baekyeon who studied vocal performance at the Performing Arts faculty.

However, only Jongdae, Junmyeon, and Yixing were there because the others had practice that afternoon.

“I never said I liked her – I just like her voice!” Chanhee defended herself as she ate the sandwich she had bought herself for lunch.

“And her face, and her eyes, and her lips, and everything else! You said she was the most beautiful girl you had ever seen, too, remember?” Baekyeon said, nearly screeching. “This is incredible.”

“I don’t get it, what’s the deal with her?” Chanhee asked, confused.

“I just don’t like her!” Baekyeon answered. “You can’t like her if I don’t like her!”

“Remember that Baek got the starring female role on the school’s musical when we were still in first year, but that she was never able to get a starring role again?” Jongdae chirped in. Chanhee nodded at him – she remembered how happy her friend had been and how happy they had been for her. Freshmen didn’t normally get starring roles, after all, so it had been a very big deal. The following year, she hadn’t managed to get a single role, which led to her giving up on musicals completely. It wasn’t so bad because by second year Baekyeon had more or less figured out that her area of interest wasn’t in theatrical performance, but rather in the process of song creation, but Chanhee knew she would forever be bitter about not managing to get even a supporting role (actually, out of respect for her best friend, she hadn’t attended a single function of their college’s musicals after all the drama Baekyeon had gone through). 

Jongdae continued, “the girl that got the starring role when we were in second year was Kyungsoon, who was a freshman in our career two years ago. Since then she’s gotten the starring role every single year. In first year she was Eliza Doolittle in _‘My Fair Lady’_ , last year she was Maria from _‘The Sound of Music’_ , and everybody knows she’s going to get Sally Bowles from _‘Cabaret’_ this year.”

“Wow, so it was her as Maria last year?” Yixing asked, clearly impressed. “She was so good! She has an amazing voice!”

“She does,” Jongdae said. “She’s pretty much a celebrity in our faculty, actually!”

Baekyeon punched Jongdae’s arm, which caused him to flinch. “Stop praising her! She’s the closest thing I have to an enemy!”

“Have you talked to her before, though?” Chanhee asked Baekyeon with a raised eyebrow, and knowing her best friend she knew what her answer was even before she said it.

“No,” Baekyeon said, “but I don’t want to talk to her. She’s too quiet and always looks like she’s glaring at everyone. She has like, two friends both of them dudes and both of them handsome as fuck, and she doesn’t participate in most faculty events! But then she goes and steals every show and people love her for it.”

“Have you considered that maybe she’s shy?” Junmyeon asked, patiently.

“There’s no such thing as a shy performer”, Baekyeon declared, and Chanhee frowned.

Kyungsoon had looked like she was glaring when she met her, but she hadn’t been mean. She had actually been quite kind, all in all, even though Chanhee had probably made her uncomfortable. She had seemed happy when Chanhee praised her, but the tall girl supposed it was only natural since she was saying something good about her.

Chanhee got curious, all of a sudden – why was Kyungsoon taking showers so early some days of the week? She knew most classes of the faculty of Performing Arts started at ten, so she definitely wasn’t getting up early for class.

While her friends discussed the possibility of a performer being shy or introverted Chanhee thought about Kyungsoon, and perhaps it could be considered traitorous behavior towards her best friend, but she couldn’t wait to hear the short girl singing again.


	2. Chapter 2

Chanhee had to wait until the following Monday morning to hear Kyungsoon sing again.

Like the week before, the black haired girl was already in the shower when Chanhee arrived there (she used the same one every time, Chanhee noticed), and this time she used the shower on the stall right next to hers.

For a long time, Kyungsoon didn’t sing. It wasn’t until a few minutes had passed that Chanhee heard the other girl’s sweet, velvety voice. Like the previous times, she allowed herself to close her eyes while she listened to the song she was singing –one that Chanhee liked very much—, but the singing only lasted for a few moments until Kyungsoon finished her shower.

She seemed hasty, and she sounded like she was gathering all her stuff as quick as possible to get out of there.

But Chanhee didn’t want her to go.

She wanted to listen to her for as long as she could, and she had barely gotten the chance to hear her.

So before she could give it a second thought she turned off her own shower and called out for the other girl, though her voice was almost timid. “Kyungsoon?”

For a few seconds there was only silence, but eventually the other girl responded from her shower stall next to Chanhee’s.

“Yes?” She said, and her voice echoed inside the warm, humid shower room.

“Is that you?” Chanhee asked, again, and she actually felt comforted by the other girl’s voice to the point where she smiled – never mind the fact that she was just standing naked in the middle of a shower with the water turned off and that she was starting to get a little cold.

“Yes,” Kyungsoon said again. “It’s… Park Chanhee, right?”

“Yeah,” Chanhee said, and she couldn’t help but laugh a little awkwardly. “Good morning.”

“Uhm, good morning to you too,” the other girl said, and Chanhee heard some rustling coming from the stall she was using. “I have to leave now, but, uh… Enjoy your shower, I guess?”

She heard the distinctive sound of the shower curtain rings clinking against the metallic bar as the other girl pushed it open, and the urge to keep her there became even stronger.

“Wait!” Chanhee called, not really caring that she was probably coming off as weird. Kyungsoon probably already thought she was weird enough, and perhaps –like Baekyeon said— she _was_ weird, so there was no point in fighting it.

“What is it?” the other girl asked, and this time the sound came from the other side of the curtain. Chanhee looked at it and saw Kyungsoo’s silhouette on it, though it was a bit deformed by the folds of the plastic material. She seemed to just be standing there, and Chanhee imagined that she looked just like the other two times she had seen her – her face bare, her hair and her body wet, and still some kind of flawless. 

“I-I just…” Chanhee started, mentally going through all the words she had ever learnt during her life to avoid saying anything stupid. “You were singing again… And I really like that song. It sounds even better when you sing it.”

“Oh,” Kyungsoon said, and Chanhee wished she could look at her face. She only heard her fidgeting with her feet, her flip flops making squishy sounds over the tiled floor. “Oh, god, thank you so much, you’re so nice…! I’m… I don’t know what to say…” 

Chanhee wondered if poking her head out of her shower would freak the other girl too much.

“I’m not being nice! I’m being honest, you know?” The tall girl said, and she ran her hands through her wet hair to gather some foam in it. She hadn’t even rinsed her hair. “Is it exaggerated if I say that you have the prettiest voice I have ever heard?”

“Oh my god,” Chanhee heard Kyungsoon say, and then she heard her _laugh_ and the sound was so warm and melodic and contagious that Chanhee couldn’t help but laugh as well.

“What!” the tall girl asked.

“Nothing— it’s just _really_ exaggerated of you to say that,” Kyungsoon said, and Chanhee saw her silhouette moving her arm frantically. Chanhee guessed that she was fanning her face. “My face is so red—I’m so glad you can’t see me right now.”

“What? Oh, I want to see that!” Chanhee said, and she didn’t think twice before she let her next words slip from her lips. “I bet you look so cute with your cheeks red…!”

“Oh, I don’t! I look like a tomato!” Kyungsoon retorted, and only then Chanhee stopped to think about what she had said – though mostly because Kyungsoon hadn’t seemed to bat an eye at it.

“A cute tomato, I’m sure,” Chanhee insisted, though this time it was more out of curiosity – she wanted to see how far she could take it.

“Hmm…” Kyungsoon hummed, not quite convinced. “No, just an ugly tomato. An ugly wet tomato, in this case.”

“Oh, please, you know you’re not ugly,” the tall girl said, and she moved closer to the curtain to try and take a peek. But she didn’t dare – she thought she was being pretty shameless already. “You’re actually… You’re actually very pretty, you know? Like… Head-turning pretty.”

“Thank you…” Chanhee heard the other girl say, her voice soft – although it soon acquired a slightly playful tone that Chanhee wasn’t sure if it was actually there or if it was only her still partially asleep brain. “Although… You’ve only really seen me wet and half-naked after a shower.” 

Chanhee’s eyebrows shoot upwards at Kyungsoon’s choice of words. She didn’t know whether the younger girl had done it on purpose because technically it was also true.

“Yeah, well; you still seem like you’re the head-turning kind of pretty when you’re dry and wearing clothes,” Chanhee said, and she felt rewarded when she heard the other girl laugh cutely on the other side of the curtain. “So, do you know you’re beautiful or do I have to pull a One Direction and sing to you to let you know that you are beautiful?”

“Oh, don’t get me started with One Direction,” Kyungsoon said, and Chanhee could tell that she was smiling.

Only then she dared look outside just a little bit. She only pulled on the curtain enough so that part of her face could be seen, and she smiled brightly at Kyungsoon who was just leaning against the frame of the door. Her towel was baby blue, now, which made her skin look even more bronzy. Her hair was still wet and dripping down her neck and over her shoulders, and she was honestly too pretty for Chanhee’s mental health.

(For a split second, the tall girl wondered if she really thought that Kyungsoon was beautiful or if she was just hypnotized by her voice. All she had to do was look at the other girl to realize that, yes—Kyungsoon was fucking gorgeous.)

“Why, you don’t like them?” Chanhee asked, tilting her head, and she knew she probably looked ridiculous with a bunch of foam on her head, but she didn’t mind, for some reason.

“I love them, actually,” Kyungsoon admitted, and she smiled at Chanhee.

“Oh. That’s cool,” Chanhee said, feeling a little dumb, but in a happy and pleasant way. “I like them too, actually!”

“That’s cool,” Kyungsoon echoed, but that was the last thing she said before she straightened up, holding on more tightly to her plastic shower basket. “Okay, Chanhee, it’s been nice to talk to you, but I really got to go. Guess I’ll see you here tomorrow morning again?”

“If I don’t fall asleep, then yes,” Chanhee said, grinning, and Kyungsoon nodded, smiling. The younger girl waved goodbye at her (a gesture that Chanhee couldn’t really return), but before she could go too far Chanhee called for her again. “See you tomorrow!”

“Bye!” Kyungsoon called without turning around, and Chanhee watched her as she left, the biggest smile on her face.

She had to tell Baekyeon.

    

She couldn’t tell Baekyeon, she realized as she skated her way to the gym.

The moment she saw her best friend sitting at the top of the stairs she remembered – Baekyeon didn’t like Kyungsoon.

Baekyeon had said that Kyungsoon was the closest thing she had to an enemy, and while it hadn’t been Kyungsoon’s intention, Baekyeon had had a rough time because of her back in second year.

Chanhee had no right to say that it was dumb for Baekyeon to be mad at Kyungsoon, and while Baekyeon had no right in saying who Chanhee could or couldn’t befriend, Chanhee still didn’t want to upset her friend unnecessarily.

Although, it was sad – Chanhee was extremely happy for the funny and kind of flirty exchange she had had with Kyungsoon that morning, and she really wanted to tell someone. Especially her best friend.

“Wow, you’re actually in time today! That’s cool,” her shorter friend greeted her when she was close enough to her. Chanhee skipped off her skateboard and went through her usual routine of tying it to the bicycle post.

“And you actually showed up today, B,” Chanhee said, smirking at her friend and flipping her long brown hair for more dramatic effect. “That’s even cooler!”

“Oh, shut up,” the shorter girl said, hitting Chanhee’s arm with her fist, though then she helped her secure her skate properly. “Sex counts as working out, right?”

“I actually don’t think so,” Chanhee told her friend, smiling a little bit. “Unless you go at it like crazy. Was that the case?”

Baekyeon just raised a smug eyebrow up at her, “well… I lost count after the third round.”

“Psh,” Chanhee scoffed, adjusting the strap of her duffel bag on her shoulder. “Three is minor leagues in lesbian sex and you know it.”

“Shh!” Baekyeon shushed her, glaring up at her but with a little malicious glint in her eyes that revealed that she knew what Chanhee was talking about. The tall girl just laughed as they stepped into the gym. Baekyeon lowered her voice, but she didn’t stop talking. “Jongdae’s incredible with his tongue. Probably even better than you.”

“That ‘probably’ is the key-word: he’s not,” Chanhee said, winking at Baekyeon, and her best friend spluttered. Chanhee laughed again as she patted her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, your big gay secret is safe with me,” Chanhee assured her.

“It’s a big _bi-curious_ secret, and bitch, it better be, because if Jongdae finds out you’ve gone down on me he’s gonna want a replay, or some shit, and I’m not into three-ways,” Baekyeon told her friend through gritted-teeth. Chanhee nodded down at her and made a zipped-lips gesture down at Baekyeon. The shorter girl seemed satisfied enough. “Okay, now let’s get started or we will both be late to class.”

 

 

Unlike every day of the previous week, Baekyeon didn’t even approach the topic of the singing girl.

It was obvious that learning that it was Kyungsoon had made her upset, and Chanhee could tell that her best friend was making some kind of effort to keep their mid-work-out conversation family friendly.

It sucked a little, but not too much. She loved spending time with Baekyeon, and they could always talk for hour and hours about the dumbest, or deepest, or strangest stuff without getting bored, so she didn’t get to dwell that much in it.

Plus, she had other friends she could maybe share her experience with.

When she was taking her second shower of the day in the gym’s showers she remembered her conversation with Kyungsoon again, and she smiled.

She hoped Kyungsoon was having a good day, wherever she was.

    

“Where are Baek and Jongdae?” Chanhee asked as she joined her friends for lunch. She only had enough time to eat something quickly before she had to go to the school where she had to do her practice at, and she had found that all of her friends were in their usual table except for Baekyeon and Jongdae.

“In those bushes right there,” Lu Han said around a mouthful of noodles, smirking as he pointed in a random direction. Minseon rolled her eyes next to him.

“Actually, Jongdae is at the tryouts for this year’s musical,” Junmyeon explained, “and Baekyeon went with him for moral support.”

“What?” Chanhee’s jaw dropped at that. “She’s okay with that?”

“It seems so,” Junmyeon said, “I mean— even if she wasn’t okay with it, it’s up to Jongdae, and Jongdae has always wanted to participate in a musical.”

“Yeah, yeah, but still. Shouldn’t it upset her a little bit, at least?” The tall girl asked, ripping the foil that covered her sandwich. “She was pretty pissed off last Friday—you guys should have seen her! When I told her that the girl that sang in the shower in the mornings was Kyungsoon she flipped.”

“I think it’s not the musicals that piss her off, but Kyungsoon herself,” Yifan said. “Though I have no idea why… I’ve never met her personally, but last year we went to see the musical with Yixing and she was awesome. She was an awesome nun. And she’s so tiny, too, it’s so cute.”

“I know, right?” Chanhee said, and she high-fived Yifan across the table. “She’s so cute… Today we talked, and I think she might have flirted with me a little, too?”

“Oooh, really?” Minseon asked, sipping on her apple juice carton. Her free hand was on Lu Han’s hair, her fingers threaded through the boy’s light brown locks. “She’s into girls?”

“Either that or she’s oblivious,” Chanhee reasoned. “Because, I mean, she wasn’t shamelessly flirty. I told her that she was very pretty. ‘Head-turning’ level pretty is what I said—“ Lu Han whistled, and Yifan muttered an impressed ‘damn’ under his breath, but Chanhee paid them no mind. “And then she told me that I had only ever seen her wet and half-naked, so I had no idea what she actually looks like… Is that flirting? It sounded flirty.”

“But it’s true, though— I mean, maybe she was flirting, but maybe she was just stating a fact in a non-conventional way?” Junmyeon offered, but Lu Han shook his head, unconvinced.

“Wet and naked? There are other ways of saying that! She might’ve said that you had only seen her after a shower and just leave it at that. She wouldn’t have said wet and naked if she didn’t want you to think about something else that gets you wet and naked, you know what I mean?” Lu Han said, and this time Minseon nodded.

“It’s true. And when girls use the word wet… You know better than anyone that it’s never randomly,” the future English teacher said, winking at Chanhee. “Besides, if she knows who you are, she probably knows that you’re as straight as instant noodles.”

Chanhee laughed at Minseon’s joke, but she hummed thoughtfully as she grabbed the tin foil that had covered her sandwich and turned it into a ball. “Maybe. But I don’t think she knows who I am.”

“Why not?” Yixing asked, a concerned expression on his face that seemed a little too serious for a simple discussion about crushed. “You’ve asked around for her. What makes you think she hasn’t tried to find out who you are?”

Chanhee shrugged. “I don’t know? All I’ve done is be weird to her, but she’s a goddess. She sings like a freaking angel, too. There are lots of weirdos out there, but not too many goddesses.”

“But you’re a cute weirdo; and you’re pretty much the goddess of skateboards!” Yixing said, smiling warmly at her. “I’d be into you if I liked girls, I think.”

The tall girl chuckled, and she patted Yixing’s hand. “You’re sweet.”

“No, I’m honest,” Yixing said. “It just so happens that the truth is sweeter than you let yourself think. Maybe it’s too soon to talk about her liking you, but that doesn’t mean she might not be interested at least the tiniest bit in you.”

    

Chanhee left the school where she was doing her practice at around five in the afternoon since music class was the last period of the day on Mondays.

It had been fun, all in all, and the smiles that the little boys and girls made when they managed to get the chords right in their oversized guitars were so bright and warm that they made her feel that she was doing the right thing with her life.

But boy, were they rowdy.

By the time Chanhee arrived back to her dorm in campus (located, thankfully, around twenty minutes away from the middle school she taught at _by foot_ , unlike the high schools were Junmyeon and Minseon were doing their practices – pretty much on the other side of Seoul) it was almost six. It would take her half that time if she used her skateboard to get there, but Chanhee didn’t think the teachers from the school would deem her very professional if she arrived to work on a skateboard.

She was just walking up the stairs, humming the repetitive song she had been teaching to her class that afternoon, when she encountered a short, black haired girl that was struggling to get a huge suitcase up the stairs.

“Oh, shit, you need help with that?” Chanhee said as she quickly climbed the few stairs that separated her from the black haired girl. “That looks heavy!”

“That’s because it is heavy,” the other girl said, her voice strained because of the effort. “Thank you so much—“

“—Kyungsoon?” Chanhee said as soon as the girl turned around to look at her direction, a grin spreading on her lips easily. “Hey!”

“Uhm, hi!” Kyungsoon said, smiling as well, and wow— she was extremely pretty even when she wasn’t wet and half-naked, and Chanhee thought life wasn’t fair. The younger girl’s black hair was curled up a little bit and it framed her face just right, and she was wearing a slightly oversized forest green sweater and tights. She looked comfortable and fluffy, and Chanhee spotted eyeliner wings and transparent lip gloss on her big lips. “I can’t believe the elevator decided not to work just now when I have to carry this huge thing… You really don’t mind helping me?”

Chanhee grinned, feeling like it was Kyungsoon who was doing her a favor instead of the other way around. “Not at all! We live in the same floor, anyway, right? The second one?”

They both grabbed at the suitcase together and started bringing it with them up the stairs and, indeed, it was extremely fucking heavy.

Though it wasn’t so bad between the two of them.

“Actually I live in the third…” Kyungsoon said. “I just like the showers of your floor more because they’re cleaner. The day I saw a cockroach in our washroom was the last time I showered there.”

“Oh my god! Ew, that’s so horrible!” Chanhee exclaimed, and she almost shivered at the thought of cockroaches in the bathroom, though she tried to keep her cool in front of Kyungsoon. “You’re free to use our showers whenever you want, don’t worry. Especially if you’re gonna keep singing like you do!”

Kyungsoon snorted, and then they finally reached the second floor. They stopped to rest for a moment.

“You will never let it go, will you?” The shorter girl said, but Chanhee saw that she was smiling. “Sometimes I don’t know if you’re messing with me, or if you really like that I sing there—“

“—what? Oh, trust me, I’m not just messing with you. I love, love, _love_ the way you sing. Honestly. If it were up to me I would pay you to sing to me every day, all day,” Chanhee declared, and she was about to regret what she had said until Kyungsoon broke into a sweet laughter.

“That’s so stupid! You’d get bored!” Kyungsoon said, and she started pulling the suitcase towards the second set of stairs. Chanhee followed quickly.

“I would not!” Chanhee argued as they started going up the stairs again.

“Would too. It’ll be kind of like when you eat chocolate every day… You get bored of it, eventually!”

Chanhee shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

“If you say so…” Kyungsoon said, sending Chanhee a little disbelieving smile, and Chanhee didn’t feel bad in the slightest. She beamed at the shorter girl.

They reached the third floor, and when Kyungsoon was about to tell Chanhee that she could take the suitcase the rest of the way, Chanhee insisted that she let her do it, that she didn’t mind.

They stopped in front of room _’310’_ , and Chanhee tried to burn that number into her brain.

“But hey, what is in the bag anyway?” The taller girl asked as she brought the suitcase to a stop, letting it stand on its wheels in front of the door as Kyungsoon fished the small bag that was crossed over her torso for her card key.

“Just… Just clothes from the university’s drama club thing. It’s kind of stupid, actually…” Kyungsoon said, but Chanhee didn’t think it was stupid at all. “I do musicals, you know? And being in that scene I couldn’t help but notice that lots of the costumes are kind of worn down… So I get paid to mend some stuff. It’s good extra money.”

“That’s so awesome, and I had totally forgotten that you do musicals! That is honestly so cool! My friends told me that you’ve gotten the starring role for two years in a row and that it’s obvious that you’ll get it this year too!” Chanhee said, unable to hide her excitement.

“It’s not obvious!” Kyungsoon said, shaking her head and blushing. “I’m just… I just really like performing. Singing, acting, and all that jazz, and musicals have the best of both worlds but together into one.”

“Yeah, I get it. Musicals are really awesome— I mean, I don’t think I could participate in one, but they sure are fun to watch. It’s sad, though… I actually haven’t been to our university’s musicals since my friend Byun Baekyeon participated in it three years ago…” Chanhee lamented, “and it sucks, because if I had gone to see them I would have heard your voice sooner and maybe we would have met sooner, too.”

“But we met each other _now_ ; I don’t see a problem with that,” the younger girl said, looking up at Chanhee with a little smile. “Thank you for helping me.”

Chanhee shook her head and waved her hand dismissively. “You don’t need to thank me, Kyungsoon.”

“But I want to thank you,” Kyungsoon said, tilting her head as she looked up at Chanhee. “You’re cool.”

“Thanks,” Chanhee replied, though she was so surprised by the sudden compliment that she unintentionally ended up wording her thanks as a question.

“A little weird, but still cool,” the shorter girl continued, a little smile growing in her lips and making them look like a heart. “And I was thinking… Perhaps it’s a bit rushed and dumb, and you can say no if you want, of course, but I was wondering if you would like to grab a coffee together sometime…?” 

Chanhee’s brain nearly short-circuited at that.

“A cup of coffee?” Chanhee asked, echoing Kyungsoon’s words, and the younger girl nodded, looking up at her with her wide round eyes. “With you? Together with me?” She asked again, and Kyungsoon nodded, though Chanhee noticed a blush on her cheeks.

“Well, yeah,” she replied. “I just want to... I don’t know, I just think meeting you in a place that isn’t the dorm washroom could be nice. But only if you’re up for it. Are you?”

“I am so up for it! Yeah, it sounds wonderful!” Chanhee said, both confused and ecstatic at the same time. 

They decided to exchange phone numbers so they could agree on a place and a time to meet, and as Kyungsoon saved her number into Chanhee’s phone the older girl couldn’t help speak out her thoughts. “My friends aren’t going to believe I’m actually going out with you.”

The younger girl stopped typing and looked up at her at that. She looked amused.

“So, we are going out now?” She asked, and as Chanhee paled she smirked more. 

“I-I mean, I-I don’t know,” Chanhee said, and she scoffed to try and swallow her nervousness. “I think… I think I would like this to be a date, if you’re okay with that. Are you okay with that?”

Kyungsoon only held her gaze for a few moments before she broke into a small fit of laughter. She nodded, smiling at Chanhee before she resumed adding her name on her phone.

“I’m super okay with that, actually.”

“Wow,” Chanhee said as she got her phone back from the younger girl. “I didn’t know you were…”

“Into girls?” Kyungsoon offered, and Chanhee nodded slowly. “I’m into girls _also_. But we can talk about that on our date.”

“Yeah, we can…” Chanhee said, still feeling at a loss of words. She put her phone away in her pocket, and she couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, man, I wanted to ask you out, but you totally beat me to it! I thought it would be too soon…!”

“Hm, probably. But I’ve known who you are for a while… I just never had the chance to talk to you before. And anyway, isn’t the purpose of dates to get to know the other person? We can’t get to know each other in the washroom,” Kyungsoon explained, and Chanhee chuckled – though the bit the younger girl said about knowing about her from before really stuck with her.

Had she already known who she was before they had casually used the showers at the same time? Had she been _into_ her, or something? Chanhee’s heart beat a little faster at that—

But then, why hadn’t she approached her before?

Did Kyungsoon dislike Baekyeon, or something? It was impossible for her not to know who Baekyeon was since she was just one year above her and Baekyeon was pretty well known inside and outside of her faculty.

“I guess we’ll see each other tomorrow morning?” Chanhee said, but Kyungsoon shook her head.

“Oh, not tomorrow— I don't have to wake up early tomorrow after all. But on Wednesday, I think we might see each other,” the younger girl said.

“Okay. I hope you really sing by then! Today you didn’t sing much at all, it was sad…” Chanhee joked, and Kyungsoon rolled her eyes before waving at her with one of her hands.

“Bye-bye, unnie, and thanks again,” Kyungsoon called, and Chanhee sent her a peace sign.

“It’s my pleasure,” Chanhee said before she headed back to her floor.

It was a good thing her roommate wasn’t around because she could dance around the room in happiness without getting judged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this part came out really long (like twice as long as the previous one!!), but I've been having so much fun writing it that I don't mind.  
> Hope you don't mind either and that you enjoyed it!!!  
> Please don't forget to leave a comment!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many references to Cabaret (the 1972 movie starring Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles) in this chapter, so if you haven't watched it I suggest you at least give the Wikipedia page a read. However, if you have the opportunity to watch it, please do!!
> 
> *ALSO: reference to a scene of the movie, which includes Nazis (and, consequently, anti-semitism) and violence against animals.

Chanhee was in such a good mood that she didn’t even mind that Kyungsoon wasn’t at the showers in the early morning to provide her with some sweet music.

She had gone to sleep past midnight, and all because she had kept on texting Kyungsoon and Kyungsoon had kept on texting her back.

A few hours after exchanging numbers outside of Kyungsoon’s room, when Chanhee was doing some reading for one of her classes sitting on her desk, her phone vibrated with a text from the younger girl, and since then she had been stuck on her phone for almost three hours straight, all intention of studying forgotten.

From: Do Kyungsoon (sent at 9:37 PM)  
_So what are you up to?_

It had been really simple and straight-to-the-point, but Chanhee felt like someone had asked her to marry them.

 _’hey!!’_ Chanhee had texted back, deciding on going for two exclamation signs instead of her usual three. _’not much.. just studying, and you?’_

They talked about banal stuff, mostly, but Chanhee doesn’t think she’s ever been more entertained.

Kyungsoon had looked like a serious person, but Chanhee quickly discovered that she wasn’t quite like that. She had a sense of humor, alright, and she was quite witty and funny when she wanted to. She responded to Chanhee’s bad puns with the eye-roll emoji, but then she sent her a few laughing emojis that made Chanhee grin triumphantly at the screen of her phone. She was nonchalant and no-bullshit, and she had great taste in music and movies.

They had talked a lot, but they never seemed to run out of things to talk about. The only thing Chanhee wished for was that the same thing happened to them when they met in person for their date (on Friday, at the front gate of their university at seven pm, and they agreed it would be fun to take a risk and see where to go on the spot), because there was nothing Chanhee hated more than awkward silences.

As it had become usual, Chanhee met Baekyeon outside of the campus gym, she secured her skateboard, and then they went inside.

Chanhee had been trying to not let her happiness show so the topic of Kyungsoon would come up – she had already made the decision that she would only tell Baekyeon about what seemed to be going on between the two when she had an idea of what they were (if they were ever something), because she had no idea how her best friend would react when she told her she was going on a date with her “enemy”.

But it had been Baekyeon who brought the subject up.

They were doing sit-ups, though they took turns doing them so they could take little breaks in between and help each other out. Baekyeon had been holding Chanhee’s feet down, kneeling in front of her and keeping her long legs steady as the tall girl reached up over and over again. She had been in the middle of a sit-up when Baekyeon spoke.

“I also tried out for this year’s musical,” she said, and Chanhee could only let out a wheeze of confusion.

“You wha—?” She asked her, stopping as she reached her knees. “Really?”

Baekyeon nodded, looking proud of herself as she pushed Chanhee back down on the mat. “Yeah! Jongdae had been pestering me to give it a try for a long time, and that almost convinced me— but I think what really did it was Do Kyungsoon’s audition.”

“H-Huh?” Chanhee huffed out again, even more confused, though this time she didn’t stop doing the sit-ups so Baekyeon wouldn’t push her again. A strange feeling settled in the pit of her stomach, though. “W-Why?”

Baekyeon shrugged. “It was kinda boring. No— it was very boring, actually. She’s way too boring to be Sally Bowles.”

“She’s not boring!” Chanhee argued, her voice strained due to the effort she was doing. “She’s very cool! She could be Sally Bowles any day!”

“But I want to be Sally Bowles,” the shorter girl said, and the way she said it was almost challenging. “Sally Bowles is no nun in the Alps— she’s a showgirl in a cabaret. Do Kyungsoon doesn’t have what it takes to play her.”

Chanhee stopped to a halt, finally, having lost count of the push-ups, and she looked straight at Baekyeon in the eye. “And you do?”

Baekyeon raised her eyebrows at her, her eyes narrowing slightly. “More than her, obviously.”

“Then how come she beat you two years ago?” Chanhee said, crossing a dangerous line. “What will you do if she beats you this time as well?”

“She’s not going to beat me this time, alright?” Baekyeon insisted, her voice gaining volume. “Eliza Doolittle and Maria von Trapp fitted her just fine, but this year she doesn’t stand a chance!”

“That’s not for you to decide! Maybe she does have a chance!” Chanhee argued, and she wished she hadn’t let herself be whooshed into the argument because there was no arguing with Baekyeon— they knew each other way too well, so they knew exactly what buttons to push to get the other riled up and angry in a matter of seconds.

“Ah, so you’re siding up with her? Are you serious, Chanhee?” Baekyeon asked, obviously offended. She pulled away from Chanhee to kneel on the floor instead of over the taller girl’s sneakers. “Just because you heard her sing in the shower a couple of times you’re already picking her side? I think I know this girl better than you do.”

“No, you don’t! You’re being childish, Baek,” Chanhee said, impatiently. “You’ve never even talked to her; you have no idea who she is! If you took the time to talk to her you’d find out that she’s actually a very cool person! She’s funny, and smart, and you guys could be very good friends if you swallowed your big ass pride and just tried to be friends!”

Baekyeon snorted, flipping her ponytail and getting up from the floor. “Wow, look at you, speaking like you know her when she probably doesn’t even know your name—!”

“—She does know my name!” Chanhee said, standing up as well and towering over Baekyeon. She was pissed off, so she enjoyed the distance her height provided. “We’re going out on Friday, actually. On a date.”

Baekyeon’s jaw dropped at that, and she didn’t look happy at all. “You what?!”

“Exactly. She asked me out yesterday, and I’m super fucking happy about it, but if you’re going to be shitty and ruin this for me, I’m gone,” Chanhee said. “I don’t care who plays Sally fucking Bowles, but you don’t have to go and talk shit about her when you know you’re just jealous she snatched a starring role two years ago when she was a rookie.”

“Wait, wow— you’re an asshole, did you know that? You’re saying that _she_ asked _you_ out—?” Baekyeon said, obviously confused by the new information, but still fuming. “And that you said _yes_?”

“Of course I did,” Chanhee replied, dryly. “And you know what? I’m not in the mood for this shit. You don’t get a say in who I can or I can’t date,” she said before she started heading towards the showers, but Baekyeon followed after her, not caring that Chanhee was literally storming off.

“So you’re just gonna go and sleep with the enemy?” the shorter girl asked, and the fact that she had to take two and a half steps to match one of Chanhee’s long strides made her somewhat less intimidating.

Chanhee stopped to look at her friend straight in the face as she answered, her voice dry. “Hopefully, yeah. At least she acts her age and not like a brat.”

Those were her last words before she doubled up her pace and left Baekyeon behind her.

    

“Baekyeon left the group chat,” Junmyeon told her right before one of the education lectures they had together, on the period before lunch. It was a compulsory class for all education majors, regardless of their specialization, so pretty much everyone was there (except for the music majors).

“I know,” Chanhee said, her arms crossed over her desk and her face pressed against her arms. She was moping. “We had a dumb fight.”

“So she’s breaking up with all of us?” Yifan asked, sitting on her other side. “How much of a bitch were you?”

“Honestly? Probably an eight, on a scale of one to ten,” Chanhee responded, and Yifan whistled softly at that. “But she deserved it. She was a bitch too.”

“Let me guess,” Minseon chirped in from the seat right behind Chanhee. “Did you guys fight over this girl you have a crush on?”

“Yeah— I was trying to avoid the subject, you know? Kyungsoon and I are actually going out on an actual date on Friday and we texted for hours last night, so I was extremely happy. But still I kept my mouth shut because I knew Baek would get all dick-face-y and immature about it”, Chanhee explained, lifting her head from where it was nestled in her arms. “But then she started saying that she had tried out for the musical as well, and that it had been Kyungsoon’s audition that motivated her because it had been boring.”

“So you’re going on a date already?” Lu Han asked from next to Minseon.

“So she really auditioned?” Junmyeon asked at the same time, and Chanhee paid more attention to him because he was closer to her and because she could tell her friends about her conversations with Kyungsoon later.

Chanhee nodded. “She did! And I mean… It’s awesome for her to want to participate — it’s not _that_ what pisses me off. She started saying mean stuff about Kyungsoon, like how boring she was, and I defended her. I admit I was kinda mean, but that’s only because it makes me angry that she’s so childish and that she refuses to talk to her.”

“What if she doesn’t get the starring role, though?” Minseon asked, and Chanhee only shrugged.

“She’ll try to kill Kyungsoon in her sleep, probably,” the tall girl said, sighing. She straightened up on her seat when the teacher walked into the classroom, and she tried her best to focus on the lecture, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the stupid mess she had gotten herself into in record time and in what she could do to make up with her best friend.

 

Baekyeon and Jongdae were already on their usual table when everybody arrived from their class, and they looked radiant.

“You look happy,” Yixing said to the couple as he unpacked his lunch. “Can we add you back in the group? We miss you.”

“You can add me wherever you want, honestly, I’m just so happy! Listen, you guys!” Baekyeon said, rising her voice and grinning at her friends –except, Chanhee noticed, at herself. “Jongdae and I got the leading roles for this year’s musical! We’re gonna be Sally Bowles and Brian Roberts from ‘Cabaret’! How cool is that?!”

Everyone cooed and congratulated the pair, and Baekyeon looked so happy and accomplished that it was heartwarming. Chanhee felt extremely happy for her friend, but at the same time she felt strangely disappointed, as if she had been competing against Baekyeon and ended up losing. And she was still bitter from the fight they had only had a few hours ago.

She pulled out her phone and texted Kyungsoon a simple _’how are you?’_ , but Baekyeon’s voice brought her back to the real world when she had just hit send.

“You don’t seem too happy, Channie…” She said, holding Chanhee’s gaze and smirking a little bit. “But don’t worry— Kyungsoon did get a role after all! She’ll be Natalia Landauer – you know, the rich girl whose dog gets killed by Nazis in the movie and doesn’t have musical numbers.”

“Baek,” Jongdae said, glaring at his girlfriend for a moment. “That’s unnecessary.” He turned to the others, who weren’t as familiar with musicals and he explained. “She’s the second lead.”

“Whatever,” Baekyeon said, “I’m just happy she won’t have to kiss you on stage but I will.”

“Who’s going to be the Master of Ceremonies?” Chanhee asked, though she looked at Jongdae and ignored Baekyeon. “It’s the coolest role, in my opinion.”

“A dude called Zi Tao. He’s one of the two guys that are always with Kyungsoon, actually,” Jongdae said, “and honestly, none of us had too much faith on him at first, but his audition was incredible. And he looks like he’ll look good in drag.”

“Is it the same Tao guy Yifan did it with last year at the Halloween party?” Lu Han asked, smirking at their other friend, but Yifan just shrugged.

“Maybe. That Tao also looked like he’d look good in drag,” Yifan said, and it was good that he did because it helped send the conversation a different direction.

The atmosphere was clearly tense between Baekyeon and Chanhee, but Chanhee tried her best to pay her no mind. While everybody talked, Chanhee focused on her phone again because she had gotten a new text from Kyungsoon.

_’I’m great, and you?’_

Chanhee hummed, looking at the screen and wondering how affected should she be after not getting the starring role after having it for two consecutive years. 

_’i’m great too~ :P’_

Kyungsoon’s reply came in soon after.

_’Lol so you just texted me that all of a sudden without even saying ‘hello’?’_

Chanhee chuckled softly, forgetting all about her lunch in favor of texting Kyungsoon. 

_’i just really wanted to know how you were doing?? you know, since we didnt see each other in the morning and all that :/’_

_’ ㅋㅋDid you miss me?_ ’ Kyungsoon asked, and yes, Chanhee thought— she had missed her. She had already known she wasn’t going to be there, but that didn’t mean she didn’t wish she had been there. 

However, she decided to turn the question around when she texted back. _’did you? ;)’_

_’Maybe I did.’_

Chanhee counted that as a victory – she grinned to herself, and was about to text back another response when Lu Han snatched her phone from her hand and demanded that she had lunch and interacted with them before they had to go for their own practices.

“You haven’t even been on your date yet and you’re already worse than Lu Han,” Minseon said, smiling briefly at her boyfriend who in turn pouted at her as he kept Chanhee’s phone out of reach from the tall girl.

“I’m not that bad, come on! I’m just texting her a little,” Chanhee said, trying to reach for her phone, but Lu Han shoved it beneath him, between the bench and his butt. 

“You can text her later,” he said. “Now you should tell us how it went down— was she really the one that asked you out? How did all of that go?” 

Baekyeon was supposedly involved in the other conversation taking place on the table, with Jongdae, Yixing, Junmyeon, and Yifan. But Chanhee was painfully aware of how her best friend’s eyes were looking straight at her while she talked with Lu Han and Minseon. A sadistic part of her wished Baekyeon was listening attentively while she pretended she didn’t know she was listening.

“She was the one to ask me out first, but I was the one who used the word date. She said she was,” and she air-quoted, “ _«super-okay»_ with that. But really, this is just so we can get to know each other better, and stuff… We’ve only met a few times, after all! Though we’ve texted for hours and hours…”

“Aww,” Minseon cooed, but she clicked her tongue. “You know, you should show us a picture of her so we can decide if you’d make a nice-looking couple or an ugly one,” she said, but Lu Han shook his head.

“Later! No phones during lunch,” he declared. “But do show us, eventually. I think we’re the only two people who have no idea what she looks like in this table…”

“I had no idea who she was until like, ten days ago,” Chanhee reminded him. “But you’ll love her. She’s really, very pretty; and sweet, and funny, and smart—” 

“—wow, you got it so bad! She’s put a huge mermaid spell on you,” Minseon pointed out.

“Honestly, I think you’re right,” Chanhee said, smiling. “But I don’t mind.”

    

The following morning Chanhee did see Kyungsoon at the showers, but instead of singing they talked and talked endlessly.

It was kind of funny, actually.

There was something exciting about being naked and taking a shower while talking to her just-as-naked crush, separated by a thin wall between their shower stalls.

“Your shampoo smells good,” Kyungsoon had told her. “You should let me use it today.”

And Chanhee passed it to her over the wall of the stall.

“Now you’ll smell like me all day long,” the tall girl told her, and she heard Kyungsoon chuckle in her shower, the sound bouncing between the walls of the shower room.

“You say it like it’s a bad thing, unnie,” the shorter girl shot back, as the scent of apples and mango filled the room. 

That morning Chanhee also found out that the reason Kyungsoon woke up so early some days was to work the early shift at a coffee shop located close to campus. Her schedule was fixed, mostly, but it could change if a co-worker of hers had a problem and couldn’t make it. It made sense that she was in a rush every morning, and Chanhee thought she would like to visit her at her job sometime.

When she arrived to the gym, Baekyeon wasn’t there, sitting at the top of the stairs as usual, and that was when the first pang of sadness after her fight with her best friend hit her.

She hadn’t even questioned whether she should go to the gym or not, regardless of the fight – she had already picked up a good rhythm, and the results were starting to show. Her abdomen was becoming firmer, and her noodle arms were acquiring more form, and she found that she enjoyed the effect exercising had on her.

She found Baekyeon inside, though, running on the treadmill with her earphones on and her gaze fixed on something right in front of her.

Chanhee had no idea if she was aware of her presence, but she went for a treadmill far from her, and she performed the routine by herself.

Baekyeon and her coincided at the sit-ups mat and at the weight-lifting area, but they didn’t look at each other even though there was no one else around.

It was the only time Chanhee had ended up as sore as the day Baekyeon and her had started working out.

 

Thursday went the same way, though it was even more difficult for Chanhee because she didn’t get the satisfaction of seeing Kyungsoon in the morning, and all she had was the bitter knowledge that her best friend wasn’t talking to her.

She wanted to say something to her – reach out and apologize, maybe, but she found she couldn’t do that.

She didn’t want to let Baekyeon win this battle because she thought that it meant indulging her childishness. She knew that she had said nasty things to her, but so had Baekyeon, and she felt that if someone had to apologize first it had to be the shorter girl and not her.

She had always been the softer one; the one that apologized first. But she knew she was doing nothing wrong by being Kyungsoon’s friend and going out with her.

Whenever she talked to the younger girl she felt happy, giddy, excited, and the happiness she brought her was enough to make her forget the mess she was stuck in with her best friend, though at the same time it made it clear to her that Baekyeon was being unfair.

(But Chanhee was worried. 

Baekyeon was just as stubborn as she was, so she wondered how far this could go before one them took the first step to make things better).

    

The sun was just setting on the horizon when Chanhee arrived to the front gate of campus at 6:58 pm.

She was a little bit early, and she blamed it on her eager long legs. Kyungsoon wasn’t there yet, but she didn’t mind waiting. 

She had dressed up a little bit and had let her roommate apply a bit of eyeliner to the corners of her eyes. She had braided a strand of her long brown hair on the side of her head, and she had gathered all of it on a low ponytail that she placed over her shoulder. She felt pretty.

When Kyungsoon arrived just a few minutes later it was something magical.

The younger girl looked breathtaking in the soft orange light of the twilight. Her short wavy hair swooshed in the breeze, and Chanhee saw her pushing a strand behind her ear as she smiled at her once they spotted each other. She was wearing jeans and a burgundy sweater under a white button-up shirt, the sweater tucked under the collar. She looked comfortable, cozy, and warm – perfect for the still-fresh nights of spring.

“You look so good,” Chanhee told Kyungsoon as soon as she was close enough, ignoring the rules of etiquette that said that greeting comes first and praising comes later. She grinned brightly at her when she noticed her small, barely-there smile turned into a full, heart-shaped one.

“You look very pretty, yourself,” she returned, and Chanhee felt her heart speeding up and becoming huge. It was only their first date, but Chanhee couldn’t wait to take her out again already.

“I put some eye-liner, look,” the tall girl said, bending her knees a little so Kyungsoon could look more closely. The shorter girl chuckled, but nodded.

“I can tell. It makes your eyes look even bigger than they already are,” she said. “I like it.”

“Your eyes are pretty big too, you know?” Chanhee said.

“I do know,” Kyungsoon agreed.

They fell into a soft silence, then, though it was full of sounds. The sound of cars passing on the street, the sound of people chattering as they walked down the sidewalk and passed next to them – the sound of the city getting ready for a Friday night. It didn’t feel empty or awkward, but Kyungsoon was the one to break it first.

“I know I told you I would like to get coffee, but I don’t know if I’m feeling it right now,” the short girl said. “I know a place nearby where we can eat something and also get a few drinks. The music’s not too loud, so it’s not a pain to try and have a conversation. Would you like that?”

Chanhee thought it was a brilliant idea, so she let Kyungsoon take her there, and her heart sped up again when Kyungsoon linked their arms together so they could walk down the crowded streets without getting lost.

The place was very nice, indeed. It was located in the second floor of a tall building with a cosmetic shop in the first floor, and it wasn’t very crowded because it wasn’t that late yet.

They found a table easily and they sat across from each other.

From then on, Chanhee realized that her fears of not having anything to talk about during their date were unfounded.

They talked about _everything_ ; from stories of their childhood, to what their roommates were like, to anime, to music, to their families, to what they planned to do in the future, to politics and religion.

Eventually they reached the topic of their friends, and that was when Chanhee started feeling a little anxious.

They were still in the same restaurant, and they had already downed a beer each and were drinking their second one. Time had passed fast, and Chanhee’s watched read that it was already 9:00 pm.

“—actually, the only reason I’ve been getting up so early this year is because Baekyeon and I decided to start working out together in the early morning, before class.” Chanhee told the younger girl as she –very consciously— rubbed her foot against hers under the table. Kyungsoon was letting her do it, so she didn’t stop. “At first I thought it would be impossible, but now I really like doing it! Even if Baek and I aren’t really talking to each other anymore…” 

“Why not?” Kyungsoon asked, and she sounded genuinely curious. “You’ve always been so close, or at least that’s what I’ve seen. You were always around each other, right?”

“Yeah, we’re usually like that. But the thing is— well, she’s… I’ll just say she’s not happy that I’m here with you,” Chanhee explained, trying to be as diplomatic as possible. Her anger had worn down so she wasn’t going to badmouth her best friend – although she was still going to wait for her to apologize first.

“I know she doesn’t like me,” Kyungsoon said, nonchalant, “everybody in the faculty knows that.”

“Do you hate her too?” Chanhee asked, though she winced a little at her own words because they sounded a bit too harsh.

“I don’t, but I don’t know,” the younger girl said, sighing. “We’ve never really talked to each other, and all the things I know about her are things other people say. I’ve never tried to be her friend, either, but that’s because she’s hated me since day one. Frankly, I don’t care about her, no offense.”

“This is so stupid,” Chanhee said. “When I first told her about the mysterious girl that sang in the showers she was all ‘go for it, tiger’, but when she knew it was you she flipped and started completely avoiding the subject. But just the other day she started talking about the musical auditions and she said something about you, so I defended you. We ended up fighting, and we haven’t spoken to each other since then.”

“It sounds so high school,” Kyungsoon commented, and Chanhee nodded. “Hey…” she said, and Chanhee looked at her. “If going out with me gets you in a bad situation with your best friend… You don’t have to do it, you know? You don’t have to risk fighting with her for real.”

“What?” Chanhee said, frowning a little in confusion. “Oh, no, I’m not going to stop seeing you just because she’s sour about something that happened years ago.”

“You mean, the musical thing?”

“Yeah— but I don’t think she cares about the musical, but more about her ego,” Chanhee said, but she stopped herself from spitting more venom by shaking her head. “Listen. I know… I know we just met each other, but I think I really like being with you. You’re awesome, and talented, and pretty, and if Baekyeon wants to act like a kid, then it’s her problem.”

“You’re always praising me like that, stop it,” Kyungsoon said, though there was no bite in her voice. She was actually blushing a little bit, though Chanhee couldn’t tell that well because of the bad lighting in the bar.

“I want to go out with you again,” Chanhee said, and she felt brave enough to touch Kyungsoon’s hand over the table. “And again after that, and then once again.”

She saw Kyungsoon’s lower lip moving, and the tip of her tongue running over it for a moment, as if she was thinking about what to say (and Chanhee realized that perhaps she shouldn’t stare at her lips for so long, so she looked at her eyes instead while she caressed the back of Kyungsoon’s hand with her fingers).

“I’d like that,” Kyungsoon said, finally. “I want to go out with you again.”

They were only slightly tipsy when they made their way back.

They stopped for crepes on the way (for which Chanhee paid after Kyungsoon had insisted on paying for dinner), and Chanhee had a strawberry one while Kyungsoon got a banana one. In the end they exchanged because they liked each other’s better.

They held hands this time, and since Chanhee lived one floor below Kyungsoon, the younger girl walked her to her door. 

“So, goodnight”, Chanhee said, her heart fluttering in her chest.

The night had been a success, and the way Kyungsoon lingered with her at her door, their hands clasped together was the evidence.

“See you Monday morning,” Kyungsoon told her, her voice lowered so they wouldn’t disturb the girls that might be sleeping in the other rooms. “And I’ve been thinking… I can try to approach Baekyeon during the rehearsals for the musical. Maybe she’ll stop hating me if I do that.”

Chanhee chuckled softly. “You don’t have to, but thank you.”

“And also... Is it too soon to kiss you goodbye, or…?” Kyungsoon said, almost interrupting her, and under the white light of the hall Chanhee could perfectly distinguish her darkened cheeks. Chanhee shook her head slowly, trying to ignore the way her heart had stopped working, and she ran a gentle hand through Kyungsoon’s hair.

"It's not..." Chanhee whispered, and Kyungsoon nodded.

"Good. Because I really want to kiss you."

"Me too."

So she did. She leaned forward to kiss Kyungsoon, her eyes closing naturally as she approached her.

At first it was just a brush of lips, but it was so sweet it made Chanhee’s veins feel like toffee was running through them. Since Kyungsoon didn’t make a move to pull away, Chanhee dared kiss her lips for longer, her hand falling to the younger girl’s waist to hold her close as their lips pressed together over and over in the softest of ways.

When it was over, Chanhee kissed Kyungsoon’s cheek.

“Sleep well.”

“Thank you,” Kyungsoon said, smiling at her before letting go of her hand. “You too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you also want to kiss Kyungsoon clap your hands *clap clap*
> 
> This ~thing~ has gotten way longer than I expected it to be, but I'm loving every moment of it. Honestly, the story is pretty much writing itself, and it might be cliché sometimes, but there are no nearly enough lesbian cliché stories to begin with so...  
> Anyway, thank you for reading! Please don't forget to comment <3


	4. Chapter 4

The feeling of Kyungsoon’s soft lips was one Chanhee wished she could treasure forever, but sadly, it had faded by the following morning – probably worn out after replaying it over and over before falling asleep. It took a little more effort and imagination to remember the feeling by the time Chanhee woke up a little after nine, but she did it nonetheless, as she basked in her bed doing nothing until it was a decent time to get up on a weekend.

(When Baekyeon and her decided to exercise on mornings they obviously left weekends out so they could make up for the hours of sleep they lost during the week).

Chanhee wanted to see Kyungsoon again.

Usually, she spent her weekends with her friends, just chilling, eating, drinking, and maybe also studying on the table they always met for lunch. They often went out together, too, and it was always fun.

But now her best friend wasn’t talking to her, and she really wanted to see Kyungsoon again.

She blindly reached for her phone and she squinted at the screen when it lit up, the room still dark because her roommate, bless her, was also a late sleeper.

She saw she had plenty of unread messages, though the only ones that interested her were the ones sent by Kyungsoon and Baekyeon. Her heart actually started beating fast with nervousness, but she wasn’t sure whether it has been her crush or her best friend who caused it.

She opened the chat application and she bit her lip as she mentally struggled with the decision of which conversation she should open first. It took her a few seconds before she opened Kyungsoon’s conversation – it intrigued her because there wasn’t just one unread message, but plenty of them.

 

From: Do Kyungsoon (sent at 1:06 AM)  
_I had a great time today ^^_

 

From: Do Kyungsoon (sent at 1:07 AM)  
_This thing says your last connection was almost an hour ago, so that means you probably went to sleep already… Right when I can’t sleep, smh_

 

Chanhee chuckled softly at that, infinitely endeared, wishing she had decided to watch a movie with her roommate instead of going to sleep and missing Kyungsoon’s texts.

 

From: Do Kyungsoon (sent at 1:09 AM)  
_I have to work until four tomorrow, but after that my friends and I wanted to go bowling. Do you want to come with us?_

 

From: Do Kyungsoon (sent at 1:09 AM)  
_You can obviously reply in the morning ㅋㅋㅋ But it would be great if you could come…  
Good night! ♡ _

 

Chanhee didn’t even think about it. In less than a minute she had already replied to Kyungsoon, saying that: _’yes!!! i’d love to go!!! but i warn you that i’m really good at bowling ;)) have a good day at work today!! fighting!! ♡’_

After rereading Kyungsoon’s texts a few more times, she closed the conversation and switched to Baekyeon’s.

Unlike Kyungsoon’s multiple texts, there was only one from her best friend, and it had been sent only a few hours ago.

 

From: Baek ★ (sent at 8:17 AM)  
_Hi, Channie…_  
_I know we’ve been kinda bleh lately, and I know a lot of it is my fault… But actually i miss you :c_  
_I hate fighting with you, and even though I still don’t like Kyungsoon, it’s stupid of me to let it affect me and not be happy for you.._  
_But I’m willing to make it up to you with some Apologetic Dinner!! :D so tell me, do you want sushi or pizza?_

 

Chanhee groaned as she turned around on the bed, tangling her long legs in her sheets, so she was lying on her side.

She cursed herself a few times for being hasty and replying to Kyungsoon’s text right away when she should’ve also seen Baekyeon’s. 

She was glad that Baekyeon had been the one to reach out first, and she was totally willing to accept her apology if she was willing not to act like a brat when it came to Kyungsoon. But she had already told Kyungsoon she would go, and the younger girl’s invitation had technically come sooner as well. It wasn’t something she couldn’t undo, but she really wanted to see her.

She just hoped that her friend wouldn’t get mad. It had been five days, but she had apologized in the end. Surely she would understand if Chanhee told her she already had plans with Kyungsoon.

 

To: Baek ★ (sent at 9:57 AM)  
_hey Baek_  
_I’m happy to hear from you dude :)_  
_And dinner sounds awesome, but I kinda already made plans with kyungsoon :c_  
_Is tomorrow good tho? maybe we can do it tomorrow instead? i’m sorry_

Baekyeon’s reply came while Chanhee took a shower, and also did Kyungsoon’s. This time she read her best friend’s texts first, just in case. 

From: Baek ★ (sent at 10:11 AM)  
_second date already?? Jeez, Channie, can you spell U-Haul lesbian???_

From: Baek ★ (sent at 10:11 AM)  
_(I’m just kidding btw)_  
_I can’t do it tomorrow because I’m having dinner with Jongdae’s parents since they’re coming to Seoul. But maybe lunch tomorrow? I just don’t want to have everyone there, you know? It should be just a “Chan~Baek” thing._  
_But whatever, have fun today and don’t get married yet._

Chanhee sighed and leaned against the wall, still clad in her towel and with her long hair dripping down her back. She didn’t seem angry, thankfully, and she was willing to re-schedule, which was good. 

To: Baek ★ (sent at 10:23 AM)  
_i’m not getting married yet  
_And tomorrow lunch is okay, we can just go somewhere else._ _

After she had dealt with Baekyeon, she opened Kyungsoon’s conversation, already smiling even before her not-nearly-fast-enough phone had finished loading the new messages. 

From: Do Kyungsoon (sent at 10:16 AM)  
_My friends are pros, so don’t brag beforehand or they’ll destroy you ^^  
We’ll meet out of the café at 4. I’ll send you the address in a while… See you! ♡ _

Just like that, Chanhee melted. 

Those little hearts that Kyungsoon added at the end of some messages were going to be the reason of her death. 

__

    

When Chanhee arrived to the café where Kyungsoon worked at she was just on time, and she also felt pretty even though she hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary.

She was wearing a snapback over her straight brown hair, an oversized white t-shirt, and shorts, which was pretty average for her. But she didn’t want to look like she was overdoing it, and she wanted to be comfortable if she was going to play bowling.

Outside of the café there was a group of people just standing there and talking among each other, and Chanhee wondered if they were Kyungsoon’s friends.

She remembered Baekyeon saying she only had two friends, or something, and that they were both ridiculously handsome, but outside of the café there were three guys –all of them tall and ridiculously handsome—, and one –ridiculously pretty— girl.

She approached the door of the café, a little unsure, but the mystery soon solved itself when one of the guys (one of the two tallest blonds, with a sharp face, feline eyes, and ears full of piercings) waved at her, intercepting her.

“Hey! You’re Park Chanhee, right?” He had a strong Chinese accent, and his voice was almost too soft and sweet for his face.

“I am,” Chanhee said, smiling at him. “You’re her friends, right…? She told me we would meet out here…”

“Yes!” The blond stranger nodded before he bowed his head at her just enough. “I’m Zi Tao. She still has to change out of her uniform, I think, but it shouldn’t take her too long.”

While they waited for Kyungsoon, they introduced themselves to each other.

The girl’s name was Kim Jungah and she was actually Kyungsoon’s best friend, but she was a dance major in a different university. Her boyfriend, Lee Taemin, was the shortest of the guys (though he was still quite tall), and he and Jungah went to school together.

The other blond guy’s name was Oh Sehun and, in Chanhee’s opinion, he looked like he could be a model with his amazing looks and his stoic expression.

Kyungsoon came out of the shop before things could get awkward, thankfully, and they immediately started heading towards a bowling alley nearby. She was wearing glasses, and the sight almost made Chanhee’s jaw drop and her heart stop. She greeted her with a smile and a soft ‘hey’, and even if Chanhee wanted to kiss her again she didn’t do it.

However, Chanhee didn’t miss the fact that Kyungsoon stuck by her side as they walked, even if they didn’t hold hands like Jungah and Taemin did except to cross streets.

Despite his accent, Zi Tao seemed to be the less shy out of Kyungsoon’s friends, and they talked the entire way to the bowling alley. 

“You know, since you’re friends with Byun Baekyeon we always thought that you hated us. Or Kyungsoon, at least…” Zi Tao told her as they walked down the sidewalk. They all seemed to know where they were going, which was good because Chanhee didn’t have the slightest idea. “Which was super sad, because Kyungsoon was always going on about you—“

“—Huang Zi Tao, shut the hell up or I’ll break your neck,” the short girl said, her voice firm and harsh and _embarrassed_ , and Chanhee felt like doing cartwheels. Zi Tao, thankfully, didn’t stop despite his friend’s threat and he even giggled (although he did move a few steps away from her for safety).

“She would call you ‘the cute skater girl that hangs out with Byun Baekyeon’ before she knew your name,” the boy continued, clearly having the time of his life. “I’m inclined to say the day she saw you at the showers was the happiest of her life— though it’s probably second to the day you told her your name...”

“That’s it, you’re dead,” Kyungsoon warned again, and her cheeks were positively red when Chanhee looked at her. She only managed to catch a glimpse, though, because Zi Tao started running away and Kyungsoon ran right after him, and Chanhee was left feeling like her heart was the size of the sun and wishing she had had the chance to meet Kyungsoon way, way sooner.

 

The rest of Kyungsoon’s friends warmed up to her at the bowling venue, once they had already started playing.

She found that Sehun, Jungah, and Kyungsoon had been friends since childhood; that Zi Tao had joined them during freshmen year, and that after he and Sehun spent almost two years dancing around each other —literally, since they were both dance majors, but also figuratively— they finally got together a few weeks after last year’s Halloween because something happened that sparked jealousy in Sehun.

(Chanhee connected the dots and immediately realized that indeed Kyungsoon’s Zi Tao was the same Tao that Yifan had slept with after the Halloween party).

Chanhee, contrary to her words, actually sucked at bowling. Kyungsoon’s friends, true to the short girl’s words, were freaking aces in it, and they totally whooped her ass without remorse.

But Chanhee didn’t care – she had the time of her life, anyway, and even if she never got to strike, Kyungsoon celebrated with her even if she only dropped a single pin and that was the only thing that mattered.

On her best turn, Chanhee had actually managed to leave only two pins standing.

“Yes!” Kyungsoon squealed as she went to high-five the tall girl. Chanhee gave her a double high-five, and Kyungsoon seemed just as excited as her as she lifted her arms to reach Chanhee’s hands with her own, never mind the fact that she had already scored three strikes. “That was great!”

“I told you I was a professional,” Chanhee told her with a grin, and Kyungsoon laughed brightly. Somehow, the fingers of their both hands ended up interlocked for a few seconds, and they only let go of each other when Chanhee’s ball came back. Kyungsoon stayed next to her as she got her ball and prepared for her second shot.

“If you manage to hit the two remaining pins, I’ll buy you nachos,” Kyungsoon promised her, stepping aside as Chanhee got ready to throw. 

She didn’t hit a single one and her ball went straight to the gutter, but Kyungsoon comforted her by kissing her cheek once they sat down to wait for their next turns. 

Taemin and Sehun were sitting in front of them, but Kyungsoon didn’t seem to care. So Chanhee did the same thing, and she planted a kiss on Kyungsoon’s cheek in return. The heart-shaped smile that formed in her lips let her know that it was okay.

 

Kyungsoon did buy nachos afterwards, when they went to a bar nearby.

They had deemed it too early to go back to their respective universities, and Chanhee had stopped feeling like an intruder a long time ago, so she was happy to let the night go on with Kyungsoon and her friends.

(Plus, she wasn’t ready to say good-bye to Kyungsoon just yet – not after learning all the things she had about her in a matter of hours.)

They had started early, but they stayed for a long time, and the beer was making it easier to talk like they were all good friends who hadn’t only met Chanhee (officially) a few hours ago.

Kyungsoon sat next to Chanhee, and she even leaned her head against her shoulder when she started getting tired. Chanhee didn’t stop to think before she started caressing Kyungsoon’s hair, gently, while she had a very serious conversation about memes with Sehun and Jungah.

When they left, Taemin and Jungah took a bus towards their university, while the others made their way back to their own campus walking. 

It wasn’t too far away, and it wasn’t too late either, so the walk was pretty pleasant. Especially since Tao and Sehun were walking a few steps ahead of them, holding hands and talking with each other, giving them some space.

“You can drink a lot without getting drunk. For a tiny person, at least…” Chanhee told her, and her hand and Kyungsoon’s were brushing together, their fingers lightly intertwined as they walked at a slow pace.

“That’s because my liver is bigger than my brain,” Kyungsoon joked, and Chanhee snorted, tugging a little on Kyungsoon’s fingers just because. She didn’t tell her that the liver actually is bigger than the brain, though, because she didn’t want to kill her joke. 

After that they fell into a warm, comfortable silence. Chanhee’s mind was buzzing and her skin was tingling, and all she wanted was to break the silence because there were far too many words accumulating in the back of her tongue. She allowed herself to take Kyungsoon’s hand more firmly, and the way the shorter girl interlocked their fingers was reassuring.

“So,” Chanhee said after a few moments, and Kyungsoon hummed softly in question. She looked down at the younger girl, a smile on her face. “Is it true that you liked me before?”

Kyungsoon looked up at her through her glasses, and she nodded.

“Yeah,” she admitted. “Yes, it’s true. I mean— It’s not like I _liked_ you. I just thought you were cool, and pretty, and hot. A little crush, maybe. I would see you passing in your skateboard around campus and I would be like, ‘damn’, you know?” Kyungsoon spoke pretty openly, and Chanhee guessed the alcohol had loosened her tongue a bit.

The tall girl chuckled, though – she couldn’t imagine that Kyungsoon had ever watched her from afar.

“You should have talked to me, though,” Chanhee told her. “You really should have.”

“But I thought you hated me, just like your friend Baekyeon,” Kyungsoon pointed out, and she even pouted a little bit.

Chanhee shook her head, “no, no, I didn’t hate you! I didn’t even know you…! I mean, I knew Baekyeon had a hard time in second year when she didn’t get the starring role, and she probably did mention your name, but it’s not like I devoted my existence to hating a girl who unknowingly made Baek lose.”

“Well, I still thought you didn’t like me,” Kyungsoon said, shrugging. “And I don’t know if not knowing about my existence is better or worse.”

“I like you now, though”, Chanhee told her, smiling gently, and she was surprised by how steady her voice sounded even if her heart was beating fast in her chest. “I like your voice, and your personality, and your pretty face. I don’t know how I never saw you before – probably because I never really go to your faculty and we live in different floors? I don’t know. But anyway, that’s why I said you should’ve approached me before… I would’ve totally liked you.”

“You’re a big sap,” Kyungsoon said, but she was smiling as well.

When they reached the campus, Sehun and Zi Tao said good-bye and headed for their own dorms, while Chanhee and Kyungsoon started going towards their own.

“Will you walk me to my dorm again today?” Chanhee asked Kyungsoon only a little playfully as they started walking up the stairs together, still holding hands.

“Unless you want to come upstairs to mine, then yeah,” the younger girl said. “It’s still not too late. We could watch a movie, maybe? A musical? Are you tired?”

Chanhee really tried not to get any ideas, but she couldn’t deny that going to Kyungsoon’s room to watch a movie sounded incredibly appealing. She wondered if they would get to kiss again, and only then she realized she was craving to get a taste of Kyungsoon’s lips again. They couldn’t just kiss in front of Kyungsoon’s friends – especially since she and Kyungsoon still weren’t anything formal. They were only just getting to know each other. They just so happened to like a lot what they had already gotten to know of the other, which redounded in wanting to spend more time together.

“I’m not tired, and that actually sounds good,” Chanhee said, feeling giddy already. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “is your roommate home?”

“Nope,” Kyungsoon replied. “So it’ll just be us,” she added, a little unnecessarily.

But Chanhee liked that detail.

“That’s nice,” she said, a little absentmindedly, her mind taken over by the eagerness of being alone with Kyungsoon in her room.

 

They were all over each other the moment they stepped inside of the room, not even bothering to turn the lights on.

After Kyungsoon had invited Chanhee to her room, they had both remained in silence, and Chanhee hoped it wasn’t just her imagination but she was sure she had felt some sort of tension and anticipation growing with each step they took.

That’s why she wasn’t taken by surprise when Kyungsoon pulled her towards her by the hand as soon as they walked into the room.

Chanhee hadn’t kissed her right away, though – she pressed against the younger girl, grabbed her by the waist, and leaned down close enough that their lips were almost touching. Kyungsoon’s hands cupped her face, and her breath fanned against Chanhee’s mouth. It smelled like beer, mostly, but Chanhee figured that her own wasn’t any better.

“I’ve been wanting this all day,” Kyungsoon confessed, her glasses still perched over her nose, and they were so close to each other that she got crossed-eyed by trying to look up at Chanhee.

“Me too…” Chanhee said, but she didn’t add anything else and instead she just kissed Kyungsoon.

The kiss was very different from the one they shared the night before, but not in a bad way. Kyungsoon’s lips were addictive, and her tongue was as delicious as the soft sigh that escaped her throat when Chanhee licked into her mouth.

They kissed for what felt like hours, the excuse of watching a movie completely forgotten as they stumbled onto Kyungsoon’s bed together. Chanhee lost her snapback, and Kyungsoon got rid of her glasses, and the younger ran her fingers through Chanhee’s long hair and tangled them in it as she pulled Chanhee closer.

Neither of them took it further than that, but it was okay.

Chanhee kept her hand on the small of Kyungsoon’s back, and even though she played with the hem of Kyungsoon’s shirt, she didn’t dare slip her hand beneath it save for the tips of her fingers. And although Kyungsoon had ran her hands over Chanhee’s ass and even over her breasts, she hadn’t been tantalizing about it – she was just exploring Chanhee’s body over her clothes, and her touch had been shy and hesitant.

Eventually the kisses started slowing down and becoming lighter as sleepiness started seeping in. Kyungsoon’s hand had moved to her cheek, and the gentle strokes she gave to her skin as their kisses turned into sweet pecks were making it harder for her to focus.

Kyungsoon even patted on her cheek when she had deemed her too unresponsive.

“You better not fall asleep on me, Park Chanhee,” she threatened, but her voice was way too thick and sleepy to be threatening. Chanhee chuckled drowsily.

“I won’t,” she assured her, though she wasn’t sure she was being honest. Her own voice was also a bit hoarse, and her lips felt wet and swollen, but she didn’t mind. “Maybe I should go to my room so we can both go to sleep… It’s getting late.”

She opened her eyes and saw Kyungsoon lying next to her, her face only a few inches away from hers, and she felt her heart doing somersaults in her chest at the simple sight of her. Her big black eyes were barely open, her just-as-black hair completely messed up, and her plump lips slightly parted and glistening with saliva. She looked beautiful, and a part of Chanhee wished she didn’t have to go.

“Okay,” Kyungsoon said, “do you want me to walk with you, or…?”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Chanhee told the younger girl as she ran a hand through the soft black waves of her hair, her fingers almost getting caught in a knot. “You just go to sleep. It’s not like I live far…”

She got up and gathered her stuff (namely, her snapback and her backpack), and put her shoes on a little clumsily. When she said good-bye to Kyungsoon it was with a kiss to her forehead.

Once she was in her own room, she fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, a smile of satisfaction in her lips.

    

“You seem so happy, it’s almost sickening,” Baekyeon told her when they met up for lunch at a sushi place nearby, just the two of them.

Chanhee hadn’t been able to stop smiling from the moment she opened her eyes, and hours later she still couldn’t keep the smile off her face. Her happiness had washed away most of the spite she harbored towards her best friend, and the fact that Baekyeon was also cooperating made it even easier to believe that they were really making up and leaving their fight behind.

“Now you know how I felt when you started going out with Jongdae,” Chanhee said to her friend. “But I totally understand, now.”

“It’s like the sun comes out the other person’s ass, right?” Baekyeon said around a mouthful of sushi, and Chanhee nodded eagerly. “It’s a good feeling… But I’ll admit this is very weird to me. You and Do Kyungsoon, I mean.”

“But Baek, tell me one thing…” The tall girl started, and Baekyeon looked at her with attention. “Do you really, _really_ not like her? I know I might be a little biased because I have a crush the size of the universe on her, but objectively speaking… She’s not a bad person, she’s talented, she’s pretty, she’s funny… And did you know that the reason she looks like she’s glaring is that she has horrible eyesight? And she’s not good with social things, so she prefers to avoid faculty events—“

“—no, Chanhee, I don’t _really_ hate her,” Baekyeon said, interrupting her, but then she chuckled. “Jeez, you really like her, huh?”

“I just think you were unfair to her,” Chanhee said, poking at a sashimi with her chopsticks, absentmindedly deciding whether to eat it or not. “The moment you found out that the mysterious singing girl was actually her it was like you suddenly hated her more than anyone in the world.”

“I’m bleh about her, you know?” Baekyeon explained, cleaning the sides of her mouth with a paper napkin. “In second year it sucked so much— you knew how plenty of teachers had said that surely I would get the starring role again after doing ‘Grease’ in first year, and I really gave my all during the auditions. But I didn’t get a single role. And all of a sudden everyone was talking about this incredible first year from Vocal Performance, and everybody wanted to get close to her, but she didn’t let anyone approach her much, and I only got mad at all of this. It was stupid and childish, but I didn’t want to get replaced because even I could tell that she has the most amazing voice ever. I got scared and jealous. And just now, it was the same with you suddenly discovering her and falling head over heels for her just like everyone else.”

Chanhee listened to her best friend, and really, she understood. 

She knew Baekyeon had come a long, hard way to get to where she was. Her family had almost completely opposed her studying a non-traditional career, and she had given her all during first year to make them see that the path she had chosen was the right one for her. Her family had side-eyed her when she didn’t get a role during second year, so Baekyeon had had to look for something else to do that could keep them content, and that’s how she ended up getting into composing, which was what she found she liked the most.

But she hadn’t had a good time.

“You know, it’s not like she’ll replace you…” Chanhee told her, “nobody can replace you, because you’re my best friend. I’m not asking you to kiss the ground Kyungsoon walks on –honestly, I’m doing a pretty good job myself with that—, but you should give her a chance.”

“I know I should,” Baekyeon said, whining, “but it’s hard!”

“Just try, come on! Yesterday I went out with her friends, and they’re so much fun – but you should know they’re all pretty intimidated by you. They all think you hate them, and they thought that I hated them as well since I hang out with you. But you know, they’re awesome people, too! I’m sure we could all be friends,” Chanhee said, forever the optimist.

“Those two tall hot blond dudes are intimidated by tiny, five-feet-two-inches me? Seriously?” Baekyeon said, and she snorted. “No way.”

“Yes, way,” Chanhee told her. “But anyway… The thing is, you should totally try to get close to Kyungsoon and Zi Tao during the rehearsals for the musical. She told me she could do the same… Actually, she told me that if going out with her put a strain in our friendship and I didn’t want to be with her, she understood.”

“And you went out with her anyway?” Baekyeon asked, raising an eyebrow, though Chanhee could tell she was being playful. “I thought it was chicks over dicks? Or in this case, BFFs over GFs?”

“I knew you’d get over your fit”, Chanhee said, waving a hand dismissively at her. “But, yeah… If you tried to get to know her it would be very good… I’m sure you could be friends. It’s not like we are girlfriends, though—not yet. But I don’t think we’re far from becoming that.”

“Rehearsals start this Tuesday, I think…” Baekyeon told her, gnawing on her lip. “I think I could try and approach her. For you.”

“Yes!” Chanhee celebrated. “You’ll like her, you’ll see!” She told her friend, and there wasn’t a single trace of doubt in her voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on a roll with this story.
> 
> Please don't tell me Baek(yeon or hyun) as Sandy Olsson wouldn't be the DOPEST thing. (Kyungsoo can be Rizzo, Chanyeol can be Danny Zuko, Jongin as Kenickie, Jongdae as Frenchy...? Maybe? I don't know, I love Grease).
> 
> Please don't forget to leave feedback!! Thank you for reading!!


	5. Chapter 5

Although it was Kyungsoon who technically asked Chanhee out first, it was the taller girl who made the big question and asked Kyungsoon to be her girlfriend and make it official no more than two weeks later.

It had been a warm Saturday afternoon, and they were on the parking lot behind their dormitory building. Chanhee had offered Kyungsoon picking her up after her shift at the café and walking her back to the dorm so they could hangout, something that had become pretty much a daily thing between the two of them. Naturally, she had gone there using her skateboard.

“You should teach me how to use that thing,” Kyungsoon had told her as they made their way back to the campus, pointing at the board that Chanhee was keeping under her free arm – the one with which she wasn’t holding Kyungsoon’s hand. “You’re tall and uncoordinated, but have no trouble doing it,” the younger girl joked, looking up at her with a small smirk.

“Hey, I’m super coordinated – I just happen to be a little bit clumsy. But clumsiness and coordination are totally different things,” Chanhee retorted, and she would have taken her hand to her chest in a gesture of mock-offense if either of them wasn’t occupied. 

Regardless, she readily agreed teaching Kyungsoon at least how to stand and to kick-start, and actually, she got excited about it quite quickly. She loved skateboarding, and it made her eager to share a thing she enjoyed with the person she likes. 

(And the image her mind provided of Kyungsoon riding on her skateboard was way too cute to let it pass without making it a reality.)

They left their things on the ground and Chanhee placed the board down on the smoothest place she could find in the parking lot.

“Ready?” She asked Kyungsoon, grinning at her even though the younger girl looked like she was getting cold feet. She was looking at the skateboard with caution and keeping her distance from it, as if there was a chance it might eat her alive all of a sudden.

“I don’t know?” the younger girl answered, though she had voiced her answer as a question, and she looked away from the skateboard and up at Chanhee with her eyes open wide. They shared a smile when their eyes met. “I think?”

“Great!” Chanhee exclaimed, standing in front of Kyungsoon with the skateboard on the ground between them. “You’ll be the cutest skater in the world when I’m done with you.”

Chanhee turned her snapback around so the cap was on the back of her head and she could have a broader field of vision, and after that it was hands on.

She had taught Baekyeon how to skate a few years ago, and her best friend had been a fast learner and had gotten all the basics down almost instantaneously – it was disappointing that she never made skateboarding a habit because she was surprisingly very good at it. She had also tried to teach Yifan, but he had fallen on his ass in front of his friends more times than he was willing to tolerate, so he ultimately dropped it. Thankfully, Lu Han and Jongdae were her skating buddies, so she wasn’t all alone in her hobby. They sometimes went skating together, too.

However, teaching Kyungsoon was different.

For starters, she didn’t want her to fall a single time, so she always kept her hands close to Kyungsoon’s body, hovering over her hips, her arms, and her waist in case she needed to steady her or, ultimately, catch her if she lost her balance. (But she also kind of wanted to touch her just because she loved feeling her under her hands).

She taught her how to properly stand over the board, and how to step on it without losing balance, and perhaps Chanhee should have let her do more by herself and stop her from holding onto her so much, but she couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to. She liked the way Kyungsoon’s hands held and clang onto her shoulders (and sometimes to the top of her head, or even to her hair) for support, and she didn’t want to stay away. 

It took them a little longer than it should, mostly because Chanhee couldn’t bring herself to step too far away from Kyungsoon, but eventually the younger girl managed to learn how to stand up on the board and keeping her balance properly.

“Now, I’ll show you how to push yourself into motion,” Chanhee told her, grinning brightly at the shorter girl that was standing on the board all by herself. “First,” she said as she assumed the position Kyungsoon had to perform over the board, “you have to turn your front foot so it’s more straight on the board, and not sideways, you see?”

Kyungsoon saw, and Kyungsoon imitated, but she got scared and she made a deaf squealing noise with her throat when the skateboard moved and her balance wavered a little – Chanhee rushed to her rescue and she steadied her before she could fall with a hand on her waist and the other wrapping around her forearm.

“I’ll fall and die”, the younger said, though the way she said it wasn’t really dramatic, but more matter-of-factly. Chanhee snorted in amusement.

“You won’t die,” she assured the younger girl.

“If I die I’ll take you down to Hell with me, so I better not die,” Kyungsoon said, this time with a little smile. She looked down at her awkwardly positioned feet, and Chanhee followed her gaze for a second before looking back at her face.

“You won’t die,” Chanhee repeated, smiling. Not even with the extra centimeters the board provided could Kyungsoon reach Chanhee’s height, and Kyungsoon still had to angle her head upwards to look at her despite being on the skateboard. “No need to go to hell yet. I won’t let you fall, trust me.”

“I trust you,” Kyungsoon told her, and Chanhee couldn’t stop herself from leaning in and kissing the younger girl on the lips while still holding onto her, firmly.

“You won’t fall,” Chanhee assured her one last time after pulling away, and Kyungsoon hummed softly, her eyes opening slowly after the kiss.

It took another, longer while, but eventually Kyungsoon managed to learn how to kick the ground with her right foot and set herself into motion over the board. She didn’t learn how to stop, though, nor how to turn, so Chanhee had to follow her with quick steps.

“You did it!” She congratulated her as she walked beside her, “see, I told you you could do it.”

“Yeah!” Kyungsoon said happily, her arms half stretched on her sides to maintain balance, her hand eventually finding Chanhee’s shoulder. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard, though.”

“But was it fun?” Chanhee asked, and she wrapped her arm loosely around Kyungsoon’s waist. She held her with a hand on her waist, and then it was her steps propelling her forward after the momentum of Kyungsoon’s kick disappeared.

“Very much fun,” the younger answered, tangling her fingers in strands of brown hair. “You’re a good teacher.”

“You’re a cute student,” Chanhee told her, flirty, shooting her a playful smile. Kyungsoon rolled her eyes but chuckled anyway. “Oops, did I say cute? I meant to say ‘good’, not cute. You’re not cute.”

“You’re right, I’m not cute,” Kyungsoon agreed as they finally stopped moving. Chanhee didn’t stop holding Kyungsoon’s waist, not even as she moved from the younger girl’s side to her front. She used both hands to hold her waist instead of just one, her hands resting over the fabric of Kyungsoon’s shirt.

Almost two hours had passed and the sun was starting to set, but the summer was approaching fast, so the twilight came more slowly. The sun lingered for longer on the sky, and its warmth was getting stronger day by day, but to Chanhee’s eyes Kyungsoon was a star even more blinding.

“No, you’re not. You’re a sexy thing,” Chanhee said, smirking a little and squeezing Kyungsoon’s sides playfully, her hands moving just a little bit lower to rest over her hips.

“That I am,” the younger girl agreed, and she was going to smirk back at Chanhee but the squeeze the older girl gave her caused her to stumble and try to take a step back on the skateboard, leading her to lose her balance.

She would have fallen if it hadn’t been for Chanhee, who gasped in surprise when Kyungsoon tripped but held onto her more tightly. Kyungsoon deemed it better to get rid of the skateboard, so she kicked it away somewhere behind here after clumsily stepping off it while still being trapped in Chanhee’s arms, her own hands gripping Chanhee’s biceps.

“We’re better off without that thing right now,” Kyungsoon muttered, and only when her feet were on the ground she dared lift her hands to Chanhee’s neck.

It was probably kind of stupid, and maybe they looked kind of little silly holding each other in the middle of the parking lot, but Chanhee couldn’t bring herself to care. 

“You could stand on my feet instead,” Chanhee told Kyungsoon. “You’ll get back those few centimeters the board gave you and I won’t hurt my neck when I lean down to kiss you,” she said with a little smirk, and she laughed when Kyungsoon tugged on her hair because she knew she deserved it.

“You love my height,” Kyungsoon stated simply, relaxing her fingers and letting them thread through Chanhee’s hair.

“I do,” Chanhee said. “I like everything about you.”

“Park Chanhee,” the shorter girl said threateningly, shooting a little glare of embarrassment up at the elder and ultimately retrieving the hand she had on Chanhee’s hair to press it against her mouth. “Be quiet.”

Chanhee shook her head, though, still beaming.

“I like you,” she said, and the force with which Kyungsoon was covering her mouth with wasn’t enough to muffle the sound completely. “I like you a lot,” she said, the sound of her voice even clearer after Kyungsoon had retreated her hand entirely.

The younger settled her hand definitely on Chanhee’s shoulder, just next to her neck, as she looked up at Chanhee.

“I like you too,” she said, her own voice soft, yet not at all doubtful nor hesitant. Her eyes were honest, too, as they looked into Chanhee’s, and Chanhee felt like they were the universe sucking her in.

“Be my girlfriend,” Chanhee said, almost on impulse, decided on not letting the stars and the suns and the worlds she saw in Kyungsoon get away. But it wasn’t sheer impulse nor spontaneity, either, because she had been wanting to make Kyungsoon her girlfriend since the first time she went out with her. 

Or maybe even before, but her friends would make fun of her if she admitted to that.

She had been meaning to ask her, but she had never been sure about when to do it – perhaps it was still too soon; perhaps having a tacit arrangement was something Kyungsoon preferred; perhaps labels shouldn’t matter because in the end of the day she still got to hold Kyungsoon’s hand when they walked together, got to kiss her silly whenever she wanted to, got to touch her, too, like they had still only done twice now (one time with her hand shoved under Kyungsoon’s white cotton panties while some old American musical plays in the background, and the other time against the wall of Chanhee’s room, both of them shirtless and in their bras but still wearing jeans because the necessity to touch each other had been far greater than that of undressing).

“You be my girlfriend, too,” Kyungsoon replied, and Chanhee was grinning even before she was done talking, “or else there’s no deal.”

“I’ll be your girlfriend,” Chanhee said, leaning down to press their lips together in a sweet, brief kiss. “Shit, I’ll be whatever you want me to be if you’ll be my girlfriend.”

Kyungsoon chuckled against Chanhee’s lips, and the way her tongue briefly caressed the elder’s lower lip before kissing it sent shivers down her spine and set her world on fire. “Just my girlfriend is fine for now, unnie.”

Chanhee captured Kyungsoon’s upper lip between her teeth and nibbled at it playfully for a few seconds, and she giggled as she kissed Kyungsoon again, and again.

“Cool,” she said, between kisses. “Perfect, perfect arrangement.”

Chanhee got lots of mosquito bites on her legs for spending so much time outside on a warm spring afternoon during the dusk while wearing shorts, but Kyungsoon let her borrow her medicine to cure her bites, later when they went to the younger girl’s room.

(She stayed over at Kyungsoon’s place because her roommate wasn’t there, and over the night Kyungsoon gave her bites of a different kind when she went down on her— she sucked marks into her inner thighs and on the skin of her breasts, and Chanhee never imagined Kyungsoon would have a thing for marking, but she had never expected herself to want to get marked so badly. 

Chanhee also discovered, over the course of that night, that Kyungsoon really, really liked getting eaten out, and that she made the sweetest sounds when Chanhee’s head was between her legs. Chanhee thought there was no way she could like Kyungsoon’s voice more than the moment she made the younger girl come— the mermaid voice she had fallen for had called out her name in pleasure, and Chanhee’s ears, brain, and heart almost melted at that).

 

 

 

It had become a rare thing for it to snow steadily and continuously enough that it accumulated without melting first, and putting a soft white blanket over the city, but it happened in December, on the day of the school’s musical premiere.

Chanhee had been awfully stressed and busy over the past few months – it was her last semester before graduation, after all, so it came as no surprise. She had to finish her thesis and deal with her courses’ final exams and projects at the same time, all the while finishing her practice in the local middle school. Baekyeon and she actually had to reduce their workout days to three instead of five so they could recover some sleep.

She had no idea how her best friend (and Jongdae as well) had managed to hold up without falling apart during the semester under not only the academic pressure of her last semester, but also the added stress of getting the starring role in the musical. They pretty much only got to see each other when they worked out and when they had lunch, but luckily the year was coming to an end – freedom was only a few days away.

Chanhee only had one final exam left to give out of the four she initially had, so the night of the premiere she was considerably more relaxed regardless of having had practice in the afternoon.

The fact that it had snowed so much that the campus looked like a winter wonderland only heightened her spirits, and she couldn’t help but smile under her thick scarf as she looked around while making her way to the university’s auditorium, a huge bouquet of flowers in each of her hands. The one with orange daisies was for Baekyeon, while the one with pink lilies was for Kyungsoon.

“Hey, what took you so long?” Sehun asked her as soon as she reached the auditorium. It was quite crowded with people trying to get in, so Chanhee was thankful she got her friends to reserve a seat for her – she had had one of her last days working in the school, and she had less than an hour to return from the school and stop to buy the flowers. Only five minutes remained until the doors of the auditorium closed.

Sehun and Lu Han had only gone out for a smoke before the musical started, and Chanhee thought they looked funny wearing so many layers of clothes to protect themselves from the cold, but standing out in the snow regardless just in order to smoke.

“I stopped to buy flowers for my lovely, talented girls,” Chanhee responded, grinning as she showed off the bouquets. “Did you get something for Tao?”

“Just one rose,” Sehun said, and Chanhee noticed the tip of his nose was a little red because of the cold. She also noticed that he was smiling. “The other presents will come later.”

“Not even I would congratulate my girlfriend by inviting them to a motel; way too tacky, Sehun, even for me,” Lu Han said, shaking his head as he exhaled the smoke from his cigarette, though he was obviously amused by the situation.

“It’s not my fault my roommate has a final exam tomorrow and he’s crash studying for it,” the blond defended, and Chanhee laughed. “And it’s not a cheap motel, anyway…” Sehun added, sounding a little embarrassed.

“Sehunnie, don’t believe Lu Han’s bullshit. Last year he gave Minseon a sexy police officer set for her birthday in a non-ironic way,” Chanhee told the younger boy, grinning when she saw how pleasantly shocked he looked.

“Really, hyung?” Sehun asked, and Lu Han had the audacity to look proud.

“Yeah! And maybe she made fun of it at first, but she’s worn it many times and she loves it now, so who’s the real winner here?”

The two boys were soon done with their cigarettes, so they went inside, queueing for a moment so Chanhee could get her ticket cut at the entrance of the auditorium.

The theater was huge, and all the seats looked occupied. Chanhee’s heart started beating faster when she saw the stage, which was covered by a thick red curtain. She was extremely excited to see the results of Kyungsoon’s and Baekyeon’s year-long efforts, and also, she couldn’t wait to see _them_. 

She followed Sehun and Lu Han to the place where all their friends were sitting, occupying an entire row of seats. Baekyeon’s and Jongdae’s families were on the row in front of them, and Kyungsoon’s was on the one beside them, across from the aisle, and Chanhee greeted everyone. 

She had already met Kyungsoon’s parents before, during a nerve-wracking dinner on the birthday of the younger girl’s father. They knew they were together, and it seemed that they liked Chanhee to a certain point, which made her very happy. However, she still got a little nervous when she greeted them before finally taking her seat between Yixing and Jungah because they weren’t enthusiastic about their daughter having a girlfriend.

The musical started after a small speech from the director in which she thanked the people who had worked on-stage and behind the scenes, but where she also gave a little bit of context.

Chanhee absolutely loved every single second of the musical.

There was another, smaller stage built upon the actual stage, where the cabaret musical numbers took place and sometimes mixed with the story going on below it. 

Baekyeon was truly an incredible Sally Bowles, and Chanhee couldn’t stop smiling at her friend as she danced and sang her lungs out on the stage. She seemed completely comfortable on stage, even when she was only wearing a skimpy outfit, and Chanhee was glad she had managed to get that role. 

(Though she couldn’t help but imagine how Kyungsoon would look like in that outfit, had she managed to get the starring role.)

At times, the musical was funny, though not only because what was playing on-stage was funny, but because of the fact that it was her friends performing. She and her friends had to stop themselves from laughing when Jongdae’s character told Baekyeon’s that he didn’t sleep with girls and promising not to have sex with each other to not spoil their friendship, or when he told Baekyeon that she was as ‘fatale’ as an after-dinner mint.

And maybe Kyungsoon’s character didn’t have musical numbers, but she was still amazing. She only realized how entranced she was by her beauty and her presence on the stage when Yixing elbowed her halfway through her first scene.

When it was over, and the actors and actresses bowed on the stage, Chanhee almost hurt her hands from clapping so hard. They all cheered, and Baekyeon waved at them while sporting the brightest smile Chanhee had seen on her in a long time. Kyungsoon, on the other hand, smiled when her eyes found Chanhee’s, but she only gave her a shy peace sign from the stage.

As the people started leaving the auditorium to go outside, Chanhee grabbed the bouquets, which she had placed on the floor during the musical, and she was about to follow Yixing outside when Sehun grabbed her by the arm.

“Should we go see them backstage?” He asked her, his giddiness and excitement evident in his face, and Chanhee agreed.

They slipped backstage together until they found the changing rooms. It was hectic inside, but eventually they found them – Baekyeon and Kyungsoon shared a changing room, which was pretty convenient, and the door was only partly closed. She could hear animated chatter coming from inside and she smiled at the sound of their voices.

Chanhee tried knocking on the door, but since both of her hands were occupied it was pretty much impossible. Instead, she just called them. (She had seen both of them completely naked more times than she could count, but she didn’t want to take them by surprise in the case that they were changing.)

“Hey, it’s Chanhee! Can I come in?” She said, and the answer was instant.

“Chanhee!” It was Baekyeon, and she sounded very happy. “How did they let you in? Come in, come in!”

Chanhee opened the door using her foot, and she smiled when she saw Kyungsoon still in the wedding dress she had worn in her last scene, although barefoot and with her hair loose over her shoulders, standing in the middle of the room and struggling to take off her earrings.

“Sehun and I just slipped inside, we asked no one for permission,” Chanhee told her friend. Baekyeon had already taken off her wig and her dress, and was putting on her pants, though she was still shirtless. “But, hey! I brought you guys this!”

“Flowers!” Baekyeon said, skipping across the room towards Chanhee with the fly of her pants still undone. “That’s so sweet and unoriginal of you, I love it!” 

Chanhee chuckled as she handed her the orange bouquet. “You better! I was almost late for stopping to buy them. Baby…” She said, turning to Kyungsoon who had also moved closer. She smiled at her, getting butterflies in her stomach like every time she saw her. “These are for you.”

Kyungsoon smiled as she took the bouquet of pink flowers in her hands. “It is too sweet and unoriginal. Thank you so much…!”

Chanhee hesitated for a moment, but then she leaned down to kiss Kyungsoon softly on the lips. It was just a brief kiss, though, because soon she pulled back so she could fangirl.

“No, thank _you_! That was an awesome performance; you two are both amazing!” the tall girl said, and she really meant it. 

“We are!” Baekyeon said, putting her free arm around Kyungsoon’s neck and pulling her in to kiss her on the cheek. “Though I kinda regret that Natalia Landauer has no musical numbers. You would’ve rocked them, Soonnie-yah.”

“Ew, don’t kiss me,” she said, rolling her eyes, but she laughed and she didn’t try to pull away.

“It’s an indirect blowjob to Jongdae,” Baekyeon said, smirking devilishly, and Kyungsoon did push her away at that.

“Unnie, what the fuck!” She said, but she only laughed harder. “Just get dressed, come on.”

“And you get undressed!” Baekyeon said as she crossed the room to finish dressing up, but when she spoke again her smirk was evident in her voice. “Maybe Chanhee could help you? Since she’s here? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Chanhee said, and she tried not to think of how beautiful Kyungsoon looked like in a wedding dress and holding the bouquet she had gotten for her. It was a beautiful intrusive thought, but maybe she shouldn’t think of stuff like that when they have only been dating each other around nine months. “Come here, turn around,” she told her girlfriend, who did as she was told.

Kyungsoon’s hair had gotten longer, so Chanhee had to push it out of the way and over her shoulder. She had also dyed it a lovely, chocolatey shade of brown, and it was soft when Chanhee touched it.

“You were so amazing,” she whispered to her as she pulled down the zipper of her dress.

“Unnie, don’t start,” the shorter girl said, shivering a little at the touch of Chanhee’s lips to her ear.

“What! It’s the truth,” Chanhee insisted, a big smile on her lips. “I’m not just saying this because I’m your girlfriend and I’m so in love with you it’s stupid.”

“Park Chanhee, shut your mouth!” Kyungsoon said, and she actually reached behind her with her free hand and squeezed Chanhee’s waist. It was only a little painful, and it was like a little game they had – Chanhee would always like to see how far she could take her compliments or her pestering, and even if she got pinched, she still liked doing it.

She always liked complimenting (and pestering) Kyungsoon.

Chanhee helped Kyungsoon out of the wedding dress, and while Baekyeon wasn’t looking she put her hands on Kyungsoon’s hips as she put the dress in a hanger. She was only in her bra and panties, and Chanhee couldn’t help but want to touch at least a little bit. She pressed her body against her girlfriend’s as she hanged her dress, and she kissed her shoulder.

“Why are you so cuddly today?” Kyungsoon asked, and by her voice Chanhee could tell that she wasn’t really annoyed. She sounded more fond than anything else, actually.

“Because I love you and I’m proud of you, and you look hot in white lingerie,” Chanhee said, her voice a little muffled since she was speaking against the skin of Kyungsoon’s shoulder.

“Don’t fuck with me in the room, guys, come on,” Baekyeon said as she hanged her own dress.

“You’ve fucked with Minseon and I in the room before, though,” Chanhee complained, only letting go of Kyungsoon because she really ought to get dressed. Everybody was waiting for them outside, after all.

“That was one time, and she and Lu Han also did it. More than once,” her best friend told her, winking at her.

“Why am I friends with you, again?” Chanhee asked Baekyeon, though she didn’t really mean it. She rolled her eyes and punched her arm softly. 

It took them a few more minutes to get ready and put everything in order. The director, who was a theater professor in their college, came in to congratulate them one last time and make sure everything was in order for the next day, because there would be three more performances of the musical. She wasn’t even mad that Chanhee was there, but she probably ignored the fact that she was Kyungsoon’s girlfriend.

They met with Jongdae, Tao, and Sehun on the hall as they exited the auditorium, and Tao was all over Sehun, holding the rose he had given him close to him and cuddling against his side. Baekyeon was quick to hold onto Jongdae with her bouquet-free arm, all the while complaining about how hungry she was and how excited she was that their families were going to have dinner together.

Once they were outside, Chanhee and Kyungsoon stayed back for a moment.

“It’s so fucking cold,” Kyungsoon said, dragging out the ‘o’ as they stood just outside the entrance, under the roof. The night sky was clear, and there were still groups of people scattered here and there near the auditorium, filling the air with the pleasant sound of conversation and laughter. It was a beautiful night.

Chanhee took Kyungsoon’s free hand in her gloved ones, and she rubbed and caressed them to warm them up. “Does this work?”

Kyungsoon snorted and laughed, but she nodded anyway. “It works, I guess. How thoughtful.”

“You know me,” Chanhee said, shrugging as she smiled down at her girlfriend. “Hey,” she continued, “are you going to sleep over? I managed to get rid of my roommate so we can have all the celebratory sex you deserve.”

“Such a romantic…” Kyungsoon mused, rolling her eyes fondly. “But yes, of course I am. After dinner with my parents, I’ll go to your room.”

“Yay!” Chanhee grinned, and she knew that smiling made her face look weird – kind of like she was suffering when really she was nothing but happy, but she didn’t mind. Kyungsoon had told her she liked that face she made when she was happy, one morning back in October where they had decided to skip class in the morning because it was raining, and instead they just laid in Kyungsoon’s bed all day, just kissing lazily and talking to each other for hours until they got hungry.

“But it sucks that you aren’t coming with us. I tried to get my parents to invite you, but they said something stupid like, “it’s family only”,” Kyungsoon said, rolling her eyes.

Chanhee clicked her tongue. “It’s fine, don’t worry. I’ll just get some chicken with the guys.”

“Nice,” Kyungsoon told her, smiling up at her. “Hey, baby… I wanted to thank you for coming… And for the flowers! And for everything.”

“Everything?” Chanhee asked, smiling and raising an eyebrow. “What’s everything…?”

“Just… Everything, really,” Kyungsoon said, playing with Chanhee’s fingers with her way-smaller hand. “You being here, being with me… You’ve been so stressed lately, but you’re still here, smiling like a dumbass, when you could be working on your thesis, and I don’t know… I love you, you make me happy, and I would kiss you right now if my parents weren’t over there, and I’m sure they’re looking this way.”

Chanhee chuckled at the last bit, feeling her heart exploding with love, warmth, and fluffiness. Kyungsoon didn’t always talk openly about her feelings, but she was very good at showing and demonstrating her affection in different ways, like making lunch for Chanhee so she didn’t have to buy sandwiches every day, and buying her knee and elbow protectors for when she skateboarded (that Chanhee was a little too embarrassed to use).

She didn’t kiss her, but she did hug her.

And she hugged her tight.

“I love you, too,” Chanhee told her, softly. “I love you a lot. We can kiss all we want after dinner, okay? Promise.”

“Sounds like a plan,” the shorter girl said, her voice muffled by the woolen scarf Chanhee was wearing. They didn’t let go of each other for long seconds, and Chanhee squeezed Kyungsoon amorously one last time before finally unwrapping her arms from around her.

They only held pinky fingers for a while before they said goodbye, and Kyungsoon went to meet with her family while Chanhee went to where her other friends were, save for Jongdae and Baekyeon.

“You’re too cute,” Yixing told her, and it sounded like he was complaining. It didn’t escape Chanhee that Yifan had his arm around his shoulders (and she inwardly cheered because the two had been dancing around each other for way too long— she hoped they were finally getting their shit together and realizing they liked each other). “You’re the cutest gays.”

“Who? Kyungsoon and me?” Chanhee asked, amused, and Yixing nodded. She chuckled. “Yeah, well... Actually, we _are_ the cutest.”

“I think Minho-oppa and Junmyeon are the cutest, though,” Minseon said. “They got that height-difference going on. Cute.”

“Thanks, I guess?” Junmyeon said, a little bashful.

“But Kyungsoonnie and I also!” Chanhee argued, and Minseon shrugged.

“Yeah, but we see Minho-oppa less, so whenever he’s around we’re reminded of how tall he is compared to our dear Junmyeon,” the other girl reasoned. “We see you and Kyungsoon all the time. That’s why they have more cute points according to me.”

Chanhee clicked her tongue. “You know nothing, Kim Minseon.”

They went to their favorite chicken place and stuffed their faces until they couldn’t eat more— they even engaged in a competition to see who could eat more, which Sehun won because he cheated by secretly giving his chicken to Jungah. Jungah didn’t mind losing because she got to eat more. It was strange not having Jongdae and Baekyeon around, and what was more, everybody agreed that they missed Kyungsoon as well.

She had befriended Chanhee’s friends just fine; just like Chanhee knew it would happen because despite being a little rough around the edges sometimes, Kyungsoon was actually the sweetest person ever (though maybe that was just Chanhee being biased.)

They took a picture of them clinking their bottles of beer together and sent it to their missing friends.

Jongdae replied with a selfie of Baekyeon with him sitting at some family restaurant, while Kyungsoon just sent a picture of the Fanta she was drinking along with a few eye-rolling emojis.

It was a few minutes before eleven that Kyungsoon finally got to Chanhee’s room, and she looked like she had changed clothes. She also had a bag with her clothes for the next day, because she had class to attend to the next day and she was a little too lazy to go to her room the next morning.

It was Kyungsoon who put her arms around Chanhee and pulled her into a kiss first, and it was her who made Chanhee come first, despite Chanhee’s intentions of "making it about _her_ tonight", with her fingers slipped underneath Chanhee’s underwear and her mouth against her ear, whispering the word ‘baby girl’ into her ear, along with other praising, encouraging things.

(Because Kyungsoon had figured out that Chanhee wasn’t lying when she said her voice was her favorite thing in the world, and that talking into her ear turned her on like nothing else.

Chanhee was way, way in too deep.

But Kyungsoon was too, so Chanhee didn’t feel at all like the sailors of those tales. The sweet mermaid voice had guided her home).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it this far, thank you!!! From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading!! I really hope you enjoyed it, because I had the time of my life writing!!  
> This chapter was fucking long, but I have no regrets.  
> In the end the rating didn't go up to NC-17, but watch out because I may write a smutty sequel just because I want to and Kyungsoon is sexy as heck.  
> I watched Cabaret for like the nth time for this, and I love it so much omg I don't regret making Baekhyun Sally because have you seen Sally??? I think I see Junmyeon as a more fitting Brian, though.
> 
> (Also! Remember I told you this story was inspired by a girl I heard singing in the showers in my dorm? Well... Turns out I figured out who she is!! Her name is Angel, and we've gone out together so many times, but I only realized it was her because we started to sing in a bar and I recognized her voice!! She's the cutest girl ever, too, and we live across the hall from each other, so #help me.)
> 
> But anyway, thank you for reading, again.  
> I would really appreciate it if you commented <3 <3 <3 <3  
> See you next time, with another (most likely) lesbian fic!!


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